
Class 
Book 



f\ "T 





Copyright^ . 



A 3 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 




J. CONNELL 



Some 
Humorous Experiences 

of a 

Globe Trotter 




by 

J. CONNELL, B. S., Oph. D. 



ELLIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 

PRINTERS - ELECTROTYPER6 - BOOKBINDERS 

BATTLE CREEK/mICHIGAN 






^ 



COPYRIGHT 1915 

BY 

J. CONNELL 

VALPARAISO. IND. 



APR 28 1915 



GI.A406179 



FOREWORD: 



To my friends of other days 
and to my later formed acquaint- 
ances in many parts of these, — 
the United States — this reminis- 
cent volume is faithfully en- 
scribed. 



J. Connell. 



CHAPTER I. 

All the world's a stage, and the men and 
women merely players. 

— Shakespeare 

Life is full of humor if one has but the wit 
to see it. The happy, genial disposition that 
sees the funny side of things, is to be envied. 
And surely there is an element of humor in the 
situation at this time. 

Here I am, installed for the winter in 
my old college town attempting to see the 
funny side of things and jotting them down, 
in my maiden effort to write a book, and 
calling it by the euphonious title, "Some 
Humorous Experiences of a Globe Trotter." 
Naturally high strung and touchy to a degree, 
I cannot even stay where there is noise, con- 
fusion, idle talk and chattering, much less 
hold myself down to think and write coherently. 
Yet here I am, and I have come all the way from 
Pocatello, Idaho, several thousand miles away, 
to find here the rest and quiet for which I had 
hoped while writing this book. 



b SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

I am rooming with a French family of 
six, every one of whom talks continuously 
every moment of the time night and day, 
without a moment's cessation and all at 
once. My room is on the first floor, and 
it is heated by some kind of hot air contri- 
vance. I never knew before, what a perfect 
conductor of the slightest sound one of these 
hot-air pipes is. It never for a single moment 
conducts any heat, only cold air and the incess- 
ant jabber of my compatriots in the adjoining 
room. I cannot distinguish a word that is said 
but as this is the time the war is on in Europe, 
I imagine the women are trying to tell how 
the French beat the Kaiser. 

I once got similarly caught in a German 
tenement house in Spokane, Washington ; anoth- 
er time in an Italian lodging house in Pocatello, 
Idaho; and yet again have at divers times 
visited my Mormon friends in and near Salt 
Lake City, Utah; but all of these distinct 
noises combined could not by any stretch of 
the imagination enter into competition 
with this French family. In the hope 
of a sympathetic response I have once 
or twice told my grievances to some of 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 7 

my male friends, who promptly advised me to 
"pay no attention to it". There is an old say- 
ing by someone that "Misfortunes never come 
singly." And I used to know a wag, who, when 
things had come to that pass as to be quite 
unbearable, would say, "Cheer up, my friend, 
the w r orst is still to come." And so a some 
what strenuous experience with my foreign 
friends in different parts of the United 
States — French, English, German, Irish and 
others — has rather prepossessed me in favor of 
a plain, ordinary American citizen without one 
drop of foreign blood in his veins. And yet 
even Americans like to talk, and the jabbering of 
the male of this species and the incessant cack- 
ling of the female gives one little opportunity 
for thought when in their neighborhood. 
I remember, when in the optical business, 
striking the little town of Crown Point, Indiana. 
Thoroughly exhausted by the day's jaunt and 
activities, and with no rest the previous night, 
I congratulated myself upon getting into the 
town early and getting to bed early; I forget 
where, but in the best and mostfavorable looking 
place in the town . All wen t well for awhile, and 



8 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

I was so exhausted from lack of sleep that I 
must have fallen asleep almost immediately 
upon retiring. But my slumbers were of short 
duration. I was awakened by a graphaphone 
in the adjoining room, playing "We Won't Go 
Home Until Morning," accompanied by a high- 
pitched female voice with a male chorus and the 
discordant noise of a cracked piano; while at the 
same instant an uproarious noise arose in the 
street and the boisterous music of fife and drum 
completely drowned the "rah! rah! rah!" of the 
victorious political party. It was no use to 
lose temper. I had been there many times 
before, and had learned by manifold experience 
that the wise thing to do, in fact the only thing 
to do in such a case, is to look pleasant and 
take a chance in getting some sleep — somehow, 
someplace — the next night. 

In one of the western states they have a law 
requiring that sheets be of a certain length, — 
long enough so that they will cover both the 
chest and the feet at the same time. I thought 
this was extremely funny when I heard about 
it for the first time. But it really isn't a bit 
humorous, and is the foremost sensible thing that 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 9 

has been done in the United States in this de- 
cade! It was a committee of traveling men 
that got the bill through. Traveling men, who 
visit many localities and sleep in many 
strange and unknown beds, are often annoyed 
by short sheets and comforters. Do what he 
will, he cannot remedy the matter himself. 
Five feet eight inches in height, he has a sheet 
that is exactly five feet long. If he covers his 
feet his chest is exposed, and if he pulls the sheet 
up to cover his chest, his feet are naked to the 
air. And again, if he uses diplomacy and makes 
a compromise by first covering his chest and 
then drawing up his legs, so as to get his feet 
under the sheet and quilts, he is in a ridicul- 
ously awkward, unsanitary and painful posi- 
tion, — sans comfort, sans sleep, sans every- 
thing but trouble. 

The night I was trying to sleep at Crown 
Point this beneficent law was not in effect. 
And so, promptly at four A. M., I arose, took a 
cold sponge bath and rub -down for a bracer, 
and going out upon the street, drilled until the 
morning's sun rose to bring confidence and hope, 



10 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

and, being with little sleep, forgetfulness of the 
past night. Now this sounds strange, but it 
isn't funny, not a bit of it. Everybody laughs 
when the wind blows your hat off in the street, 
and you make an ineffectual hot-foot down the 
line to recapture it. Many things sound humor- 
ous when they are past and gone, when we have 
naught to do but read about them, but there 
might not be the least particle of humor in going 
through the actual experience. 



CHAPTER II 

There is more in heaven and earth than is 
dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio. 

— Hamlet 

In the fall of the year 1894, having finished 
my work, drumming for fruit in the great fruit 
belt of Michigan for a Chicago Commission 
House, restless and discontented, without any 
fixed position, and filled with the social and 
almost morbid memories of the previous year 
(the year of the great World's Fair in Chicago 
in 1893), an old and life-long schoolmate friend, 
(Mr. Charles H.Stauffer) similarly situated and I, 
conceived the somewhat erratic idea of cutting 
wholly loose from our surroundings, and like 
Sherman on his historic march through Georgia, 
strike off into and through an entirely new and 
untried territory and make our own living as 
we went. Only our mission was a peaceful, not 
a warlike one; a friendly, not a hostile visit; 
a commercial, and not a military invasion. 

Charlie was by far the best fellow the good 

11 



12 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

Lord ever permitted to live and grow to strong 
and virile manhood. Chums, friends and in- 
separable comrades all of our lives from the 
time we were boys and seat-mates together in 
the rude little country school of earliest days, 
our friendship ran on in sunshine and in shadow 
all the years, until at the ripe age of thirty years 
each looking backward all the way he had come, 
we could recollect that strangely enough in all 
these years through their vicissitudes and 
changing conditions, we had never once for a 
single instant unpleasantly disagreed; had not 
had a single falling-out, nor had our unbroken 
and life-long friendship marred by the slightest 
doubt, misunderstanding or unfriendly feeling. 

And Charlie and I with our faithful little 
horse, Freddy, purchased of Leo DeVries in 
Holland, Michigan, and the carriage purchased 
of my old friend, Charlie Southard of Bangor, 
Michigan, were ready for our trip and new 
experience. 

We emptied our pocketbooks before starting, 
our plan being to make a living as we went, or 
starve. Charlie carried a stock of silverware, — 
knives and forks, tablespoons and teaspoons 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 13 

and butter knives, while I, still in the optical 
business was to fit eye-glasses and spectacles. 

It was comparatively easy to work our way 
through Michigan, our native state, and in a 
very short time strike the Miami valley in 
Western Ohio, ready to follow the valley south- 
ward coming out at Cincinnati where we were to 
cross the Ohio River to Covington , Kentucky. So 
far the trip was ideal, neither hot nor cold, with 
not an unkind cloud in the sky, the days and 
nights almost perfect, the roads a boulevard, 
the carriage brand-new and running easily, 
lightly, and splendidly. And so, although we 
made no money, at times scarce paying essential 
expenses we managed to live and had a delight- 
ful time. 

At noon, exactly the tenth day out, 
we reached Cincinnati, and driving through the 
then Ohio Metropolis, between Vine and Vance 
Streets, we crossed the Ohio River and passed 
on into Covington, Kentucky. 

Our route now took us east and south so as 
to strike the attractive little city of Lexington, 
Kentucky, famed the world over for its fast and 
blooded horses and beautiful women. At 



14 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

Lexington, the marble shaft of Henry Clay 
pierces the sky, and the open friendliness and 
cordiality of the people gives the first pleasant 
suggestion of what might be expected from the 
better class of Kentuckians. Passing rapidly 
through the country of Blue Grass, fast horses 
and pretty women, our course still south-east, 
the way, scenery and people change, and we 
find ourselves in two or three more days nearing 
Cumberland Gap, a wild, rocky, sterile district 
at which point three states meet - Kentucky, 
Tennessee and Virginia ; to which fact, atten- 
tion is called by means of a huge rock by the 
roadside with the names of these states printed 
thereon. 

At Cumberland Gap, no longer delighted by 
a sense of beauty and agreeable surroundings, 
the scene has changed to the sterile, mountain- 
ous, and unfriendly, with huge buzzards over- 
head, poised on heavy wing, and searching with 
beady eye and acute sense of smell for carion 
below. We drive slowly on, rocks, boulders 
and rough roads now making traveling diffi- 
cult, our objective point being Greenville j 
Tennessee, and our direction slightly changed to 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 15 

the southward. We had now reached a sec- 
tion where it w r as quite impossible to fit any 
glasses or sell any silverware, and so get hold of 
any money. Money seemed to be unknown to 
the people we met, and not being able to make 
any, the only thing we could do was to pay out 
money; and even then it was difficult and at 
times entirely impossible to secure anything 
to eat for ourselves, or corn or fodder for our 
faithful little horse, Freddy. The people lived 
wholly on corn bread made (without salt) 
of corn meal and water, and baked on top of the 
stove; and the only thing in the shape of fodder 
for Freddy was a few leaves from stunted corn 
stalks grown on the sterile sidesof the mountain, 
and half a dozen nubbin ears of corn, for which 
we paid the undersized boy who gathered them 
for us one penny an ear. Paying seven pennies 
for the seven nubbins of corn the boy was able 
to gather for us, we fed our horse; and Charlie 
entered a rude log cabin by the roadside, and, 
after thirty minutes' time and an extended argu- 
ment with the boy's mother, returned with a 
piece of corn bread (baked on the lid of the stove) 
for which she exacted seven more cents. We 



16 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

ate the corn bread ravenously and drank from 
a stream of water flowing down the mountain 
side. This was probably the first real money 
this woman had seen since the Civil War, and 
it was entirely new and strange to the twelve- 
year-old boy. Refreshed by the seven ears of 
corn and a long draught of mountain water, 
Freddy was in condition to start again; while 
Charlie and I, thoroughly enjoying our corn- 
bread and cool beverage of mountain ale, were 
in a position to take up "the battle of life" again. 
We were now directly at the foot of Wild Cat 
Mountain, a low, but precipitous pile of rocks 
over which we must go to continue our journey . 
We could not go around the mountain, but must 
perforce climb it direct and go over the summit. 
Asking the woman of whom we got the corn- 
dodgers if she thought we could get over it, she 
said," I reckon you can, but it's mighty rough.'' 
I had but to say in a low, mild voice, "Go on 
Freddy," when the faithful little animal started. 
Never, since by a strange freak of nature the 
rocks had been curiously piled up there, had any 
human being ever attempted to scale them in 
civilized manner with horse and carriage. No 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 17 

mountaineer on horseback with a sure-footed 
animal had ever tried it, but always went 
around leading his horse. Of course we immed- 
iately saw we would have to walk, and we got 
out of the buggy and assisted Freddy by push- 
ing on it from behind. Never before did I see 
such an intelligent effort of a supposedly dumb 
animal to accomplish a well-nigh impossible 
feat. The untrodden road was full of rocks, 
and the little horse would carefully put down 
one foot, and try himself and the conditions out 
by carefully raising himself on one front foot; 
and if that went well, he would try the other 
foot, gingerly following with his hind feet, 
slowly pulling forward and upward, with our 
pushing behind, the entire carriage with its 
load of wolf robes, silver ware and optical goods. 
After several hours of laborious and inces- 
sant struggle, wearied but delighted, we at last 
reached the summit of Wild Cat Mountain. 
The top was quite level, with a fairly good road, 
and here and there, on either side of the road, 
a rising rock with timber on both sides. Re- 
freshing Freddy with another ear or two of corn, 
a copious drink of mountain water, and thirty 



18 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

minutes' rest, we drove on, and in less than one 
hour had come upon, and passed through, the 
wierdest and most uncanny experience either of 
us had ever known before. Laughing and 
talking, and driving gaily along, at a smart trot, 
just as we came to a bend in the road, a creature 
of massive build, fully six feet in height, with 
bloodshot eyes, bewhiskered chin and matted 
gray hair, wearing a long, gray garment that 
reached to the naked feet, stepped in front of 
our buggy; but, halting only one instant, 
stepped to one side of the road and allowed us 
to drive on. Freddy snorted and reared, and, 
but for a firm hold on the lines, would have 
become unmanageable.. 

Passing now beyond Wild Cat Mountain and 
on the other side on our way to the next town, 
Mount Vernon, we again entered a stretch of 
wild, rocky country where no carriage had ever 
been, and where a single man, even though a 
rough, rugged pathfinder, could scarcely go on 
foot. At Mount Vernon, a rude little mountain 
hamlet of half a hundred houses, seated deep 
down in the rocky defile with boulders on every 
side, — here, at the only place we could find — 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 19 

a kind of alleged hotel — we managed to pass 
the night. 

That evening before retiring, seated for 
an hour or two in front of the huge, old- 
fashioned log fire-place, we told of our experience 
in meeting what we saw on the mountain; and 
in turn were told by one of the men, a massive 
square-jawed and gray-bearded man of perhaps 
sixty years of age, that he knew the woman 
well from the time she was a child. Apparently 
interested by our interest, he at length settled 
down, and filling the huge bowl of his pipe with 
home-made tobacco, related the following story: 

THE MANIAC OF WILDCAT MOUNTAIN 

I knew this unfortunate woman from the 
time she was a little child not five years of age, 
and many a time have held her on my knee. 
She was the brightest, prettiest little girl I 
believe I ever saw, with dark brown eyes, raven 
hair and a winsome manner that captivated and 
held every heart and made her beloved by all 
who knew her. 

As she grew to womanhood she became 
each day more beautiful and more capti- 



20 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

vating, until at the age of twenty she was 
considered in all of Eastern Kentucky the most 
beautiful woman that section had ever known, 
rivaling and wholly eclipsing even the far-famed 
belles of Lexington and the Blue Grass region. 
Her lovers were legion and her brief social life 
ended by her marrying a man of prominent 
family, considerable means and magnificent 
physique, but who was suspected of operating 
illicit stills in various parts of mountainous 
Eastern Kentucky. Despite this, the wedding 
was held in the most fashionable church in 
Lexington, the elite attending; and so, under 
a shower of flowers, rice and good wishes, they 
were married, and from Lexington, Kentucky, 
took the first train to Nashville, Tennessee, 
on their wedding trip. 

No one heard from either bride or groom for 
many years, until it was learned later that the 
girl's husband was shot by a revenue officer 
while resisting arrest in the mountains of 
Eastern Kentucky, and some years later, old 
and infirm, with mind hopelessly impaired, the 
once beautiful girl was discovered leading a sad 
and semi-savage life among the rocks and caves 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 21 

of Wild Cat Mountain. She had been known to 
grasp the bridle-rein of travelers crossing the 
mountain and to stop the horse, but otherwise 
had offered no molestation, although some feared 
her and others regarded her as homicidal. 

And this is the story told there of the Maniac 
of Wild Cat Mountain, and was repeated to us, 
as we sat about the huge open fireplace with 
half a dozen rude six-foot mountaineers, that 
night in 1894. 



CHAPTER III 

Put money in thy purse. 

— I ago. 

Money is the whole thing when you are 
among strangers and almost the whole thing 
when you are among acquaintances. Unable 
to make any money along the savage way over 
which we had come and having none on our 
persons, we shortly began to feel the need and 
absolute essentiality of some. Our neighbor- 
hood was changing again and we were passing 
along a highway where we could occasionally 
although not often, fit a pair of glasses or sell 
a dozen silver knives and forks or a set of silver 
teaspoons. But the country was yet new and 
raw, the habitations crude and the people for the 
most part rude and unlearned. 

We stopped one night at a low-built log 
cabin of two rooms, and after an hour's per- 
suasive and diplomatic talk by Charlie, were 
permitted to tie our horse out in a kind of shed, 
feed him some corn-stalks and go inside. 

The woman and her eighteen -year-old daugh- 
ter dipped snuff, occasionally spitting with un- 

22 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 23 

erring accuracy at a fly on the opposite wall, 
while the man told us they never "kept any- 
body overnight," and that was the first time 
they had "ever seen anybody come through 
there", but, that we could stay if we wanted to 
as it was half a dozen miles to any other place 
where we possibly could stay and it would be 
dark in another hour. A hound, two cats, the 
man, his wife and four tow-headed children, gath- 
ered with Charlie and myself around the fire- 
place that evening after our supper of corn 
bread and bacon, and we conversed until after 
eleven o'clock, when our host said, "And now, 
boys, I'll show you where you will sleep. You 
will find it right smart different than in the 
big cities of the north where you came from, but 
we like you, and if you can put up with it you 
are welcome to stay." 

He opened a door and taking a candle in 
hand conducted us into a low-arched room with 
a single bed. The sides and ends of the room 
were made of rough logs with wide, open spaces 
between them, through which the far-away stars 
shown cold and the wind came in unpleasant 
gusts. By pulling the single blanket tight a- 



24 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

round us and lying close together so as to con- 
serve the heat of our bodies and with eyes fixed 
upon the polar star, some time during the 
night, through utter exhaustion we fell asleep. 

When I next regained consciousness I 
was startled by hearing Charlie say, " listen . 
what on earth is that!" I did so and 
there was distinctly borne to our ears the 
nearby baying of a dog, to be followed a moment 
later by the mad scramble of some wild animal, 
possibly a fox, a coon, or a wild cat, through 
the opening in the logs, pell-mell over our bed 
and out through the opening on the other side, 
followed immediately in like manner by the 
sanguine and sanguinary hound. "Well, now, 
wouldn 't that take you to the Fair ! ' ' said Charlie, 
as he tumbled out of bed and reached for his 
pantaloons. "What was it?" "You are at 
liberty to search me," I replied, following suit 
immediately. 

After our breakfast of cornbread and bacon, 
leaving Charlie to settle in some way for the 
night's entertainment, I went out to curry, 
water, feed and harness Freddy, and prepare 
for our journey southward. Having done this, 



OK A GLOBE TROTTER 25 

I returned to the cabin to assist in disposing of 
some of our goods in exchange for our stay 
over night, as it will be remembered, every 
penny of our money was gone and we had to 
depend entirely upon our ability as salesmen 
to get rid of some of our silverware or spectacles, 
for we could not pay out the money we did not 
have. And here was where we got our eyes 
wide open as to the alleged hospitality of the 
"open-hearted south." We had goods galore, 
but not one penny in real money. Shy lock was 
the embodiment of mercy, compared with the 
sinister, lynx-eyed female with whom we were 
trying to settle. Repeated, friendly and honest 
offers to let her have even ten times the cost of 
our night's entertainment in goods, were re- 
peatedly met by the set and unchanging speech, 
"We want the money." Every house in this 
part of the country has over the door a long- 
barrelled rifle, which, because of seeing it so 
often, Charlie and I at length began to call, the 
squirrel gun." As this sinister and chilling 
female repeated for the dozenth time the 
monotonous demand, "We want the money," 
her eyes looked suggestively up at the squirrel 



26 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

gun, while mine sought Charlie's and both of us 
thought of our unpreparedness for a leap into 
the Great Beyond. I never could recall how 
it was done, certainly it was neither Charlie's 
eloquence nor my own persuasiveness, but in 
some way the danger passed. The ban was 
lifted, and both of us recovered our normal 
equilibrium, to find ourselves a dozen miles 
down the road with the new night coming on, 
the wind beginning to blow, and a dozen 
buzzards circling high before us above the re- 
mains of a dead horse. I considered it a close 
call, and felt again for the hundredth time 
the almost tragic meaning of Iago's sinister 
advice, "Put money in thy purse." I cannot 
think how otherwise we could have done it, but 
we must surely have unloaded ten dollars' 
worth of sterling silver into the hands of this 
grasping, covetous woman for the privilege of 
staying awake one night in a back room, and 
having a mangy hound chase some wild animal 
over our bed and through our apartment. 
The next night we stopped at some house 
along the roadside where the woman and her 
grown-up daughter made a business of dipping 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 27 

snuff. We learned in some way that the girl's 
name was" Molly"; and, on account of her skill, 
accuracy and proficiency in spitting, never once 
missing the mark, Charlie called her, "Molly, 
the spitter." That evening we entertained 
ourselves, and were entertained, by sitting 
around the usual, old-fashioned, open fire-place 
and watching the two women dipping snuff, 
the younger one always doing a very artistic 
and sometimes a very clever thing in the way of 
spitting. 

The husband and father made a liv- 
ing by raising and selling razor-back pigs. He 
fattened them on acorns and let them run wild 
in the open woods that stretched interminably 
back of the house. Not knowing this, the next 
morning through curiosity I wandered out 
nto the woods. Imagine my consternation 
when almost instantly I was surrounded by a 
score of snorting, grunting, menacing razor- 
backs. Instead of being weakened and collap- 
sing from my stifling fears, they seemed to give 
me instantly almost superhuman strength. 
Although not a professional, nor even an ama- 
teur athlete, I then and there made a jump that 



28 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

would put to shame the greatest athlete in the 
world. I sprang directly upward, catching the 
lower limb of a huge tree just above me, and 
drew myself up among the branches. And 
there I had to stay, with the angry and dis- 
gruntled swine beneath me, until the mountain- 
eer came to call them away with a few ears of 
corn, when I could with safety descend from 
my awkward position. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Back! Back! Back to New York! 

— Song of Defeat. 

We pressed on until in due time we reached 
the home of Mr. Me Am is — six miles north of 
Greenville, Tennessee — and with whom we 
had had some little correspondence before we 
left our home in Michigan. The family con- 
sisted of Mr. McAmis, then almost an old man, 
two charming daughters, Lela and May, and a 
grown-up son, Dave, a young man about twenty 
two years of age. Without in the least suspect- 
ing it we were again getting within the border 
line of another moonshine district, where the 
people, although apparently friendly, and treat- 
ing us with entire cordiality, were nevertheless 
suspicious, watchful and inclined to feel that two 
young men from so far away as Michigan were 
rather intruding upon their privileges and 
privacy. One of the girls, Lela, had a lover, 
Dave Rankin, a typical, ignorant Eastern 
Tennessee hot-head, who for some baseless 

29 



30 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

reason seemed to regard us, especially Charlie, 
as rivals; even though he knew that Charlie 
was married and I had long been out of the 
running, and ceased to count as a factor in 
social affairs. We were invited and remained 
in the McAmis home for several days, enjoying 
our surroundings and their cordial hospital- 
ity and giving us an opportunity to drive out, 
using their place as headquarters, and doing a 
little optical work, as well as making some 
sales of silverware. 

The third morning we were there, Dave came 
into our room to tell us that the night before 
some person or persons had gone into the barn, 
slashed our carriage top, and literally cut our 
harness all to pieces. We went out and verified 
his advice by finding it was exactly as he had 
stated. The harness was a wreck, and it was 
with difficulty that we were able to patch it up, 
and use it when we were ready to go ; while the 
buggy looked as if it had gone through a hard 
campaign in the late Civil War. The hint 
suggested by this wanton outrage was obvious. 
We were not wanted in that neighborhood of 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 31 

southern chivalry and hospitality, and it was 
desired that we go. The McAmis family, 
themselves wholly innocent, expressed all kinds 
of regrets that the incident had occurred. 
But, to save them any further unpleasantness, 
or ourselves perhaps the repetition of a worse 
thing, we decided to go at once. We denied 
to ourselves, that we were run out, but taking 
council from Shakespeare's suggestion that 
''discretion is the better part of valor," we left. 

Greenville, Tennessee, near where President 
Andrew Johnson is buried, was some four or 
five miles away. Making the drive that morn- 
ing through the thick pine-tree road over which 
we had to go, we thought of our various experi- 
ences in life and the different temperaments, 
dispositions, and manner of doing things among 
people in different parts of the United States. 

We next moved on to Knoxville, Tennessee, 
in which delightful little city we secured 
pleasant accommodations in the way of room 
and board at Mrs. Banker's house, where we 
remained for an even month, Freddy being 
cared for at a nearby livery stable. We had 
now begun to clearly see and to even frankly 



32 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

admit that from a commercial standpoint our 
expedition had been the grossest kind of a fail- 
ure; although we had gained much in pleasure, 
seeing a new country, and meeting a new 
people, while, far and above all, were the rec- 
ollections which memory could not forget. 
At the end of the month, still unready to return 
to our old home in Michigan, Charlie engaged in 
the briefly successful business of making candy 
in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

While left thus to my own inclinations and 
resources, still refusing to quit, I started out 
all alone, virtually "doubling" on the way we 
had come, but paralleling our back track so as 
to meet new people and new experiences. 
It had long been apparent that for me at least 
the better opportunity for making money 
and enjoying life was in the older and settled 
north, and not in the wild, unsettled regions 
of the "sunny south". Refusing to persist 
longer in following a fixed and settled mistake, 
I gave Freddy a double feed of oats, a last long 
drink at the livery stable trough at Knoxville, 
Tennessee, and, resolutely turned his head 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 33 

toward the north and civilization — Valparaiso, 
Indiana, being the objective point. 

Little time was spent in the idle attempt to 
fit glasses or sell silverware, my chief concern 
being to see that Freddy was properly curried 
and watered and fed three times a day, and to 
cover the distance in the shortest time possible. 
I left Charlie with more regret than it would be 
possible for me to state, but with manifold good 
wishes for his success in his new enterprise — 
candy-making. I believe but few people 
succeed in a new venture, and that only the 
occasional man with unusual capabilities makes 
good when he leaves the beaten path to which 
he is accustomed and strikes off into the field 
and wood. And so, when I next met Charlie 
several years afterwards in Spokane, Washing- 
ton, it did not surprise me, when in a reminis- 
cent mood, he told me his candy-making idea 
came to naught and he swam out, landed on 
terra firma, and engaged successfully in some 
kind of soliciting work to which he was accus- 
tomed, and has always continued to "make 
good" elsewhere. 



CHAPTER V. 

Be it ever so humble there's no place like 
home. 

— Old Song. 

And right here, before continuing, I want to 
tell of an experience that I omitted, which 
Charlie and I had on our way south. The 
reader will recall that we were beginning to 
run out of money soon after entering Ohio on 
our way south, and headed for Cincinnati. I 
did not like the prospect, and, as I had a few 
dollars in the West Michigan Savings Bank, 
Bangor, Michigan, I wrote the President, J. E. 
Sebring, without advising Charlie what I had 
done, asking him to send me a small draft at 
once, kindly addressing me, Hamilton, Ohio. 
I had figured that we would be dead broke 
by the time we reached that town, and I could 
go into the post office there, find the draft 
waiting for me, have it cashed, and not only 
surprise Charlie, but please myself as well. 
My calculations absolutely accurate, our opti- 
cal and silverware business a failure, we reached 



34 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 35 

Hamilton, Ohio at midnight two days there- 
after, absolutely without a penny. We were 
dressed respectably, had our grips, and after 
taking our horse and buggy to the livery stable 
thought we would have no trouble in getting 
into a hotel for the night on our grips, and no 
trouble in getting ourselves out the next day, as 
by that time I would have my draft from Mich- 
igan ; for, so far as I knew, Charlie, like myself, 
did not have a penny. 

On the way from the livery barn where we 
had just looked after putting up our horse, carry- 
ing our grips, and in search of a hotel, we were 
accosted by two burly policemen, one of whom 
said, "What have you in those grips?" 

"I have silverware in this grip," I replied, 
setting it down and op ening it for his inspection . 
"And spectacles in this grip, " I continued, open- 
ing it in like manner also. 

"Where are you boys going now? "continued 
the officer. "And where have you been?" 

Charlie, who was fast losing his temper by 
these importunities, remained silent while I 
replied pleasantly, "We just came from the 
livery stable where we have" been putting up 



36 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

our horse, and we are trying to find a hotel 
for the night." 

"You have a horse, too?" persisted the 
officer. "Would you mind taking us to the 
livery stable so we can see him?" 

"Certainly," I replied. "It is right down 
on this street in the next block." 

The two officers continued with us to the 
livery stable, made a close inspection of the 
horse, examined the wolf-robe and buggy 
carefully, and after ascertaining that the latter 
was made in Albion, Michigan, came up to us 
and said, "There is a good hotel right close here 
and we will take you to it if you care to go." 

We readily assented, and accompanied them 
to a second-class hotel with a bar-room in 
connection, where we engaged rooms for the 
night, and retired. 

The next morning after breakfast, Charlie 
and I went to the post office, where I was handed 
a letter from the West Michigan Savings Bank, 
Bangor, Michigan, containing a draft for 
$167.65 drawn in my favor. And now came 
a green -horn's first experience in trying to get 
a draft cashed ! A stranger in a strange town ! 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 37 

Of course the first bank I tried refused to cash 
it, because they did not know me; and, it was 
the same with a second. Had I been older 
or had more experience I would have known 
the difficulty and almost impossibility of get- 
ting a draft for a large sum cashed by a stranger 
in a strange city, and would have tried other 
and business methods. But, we were green 
and out of funds, and to make a bad matter 
worse, now owing at the hotel, for which we 
must have immediate funds with which to 
settle. And so it was imperatively essential 
that I get the draft cashed immediately, but I 
was unable to do so. 

Without having any money, and unable to 
secure any on the draft, the day wore away. 
We passed the time at the same hotel, and 
about ten o'clock that night, went upstairs to our 
old room and went to bed. We both occupied 
the same bed, Charlie sleeping on the outside. 

We could have been asleep but little over 
an hour when we were simultaneously awak- 
ened by a vigorous rapping at our door, 
which we both instinctively recognized as that 
of our friends of the night before — the police- 



38 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

men. With an apology to Charles, I crawled 
out of the bed over him, opened the door and 
invited them in. They came in and the 
spokesman said, "Gentlemen, you can arise, 
dress, and consider yourselves under arrest." 

The air in the room was cold, and Charlie, 
dressed only in the lightest underwear, shivered 
perceptibly; at which, one of the officers said, 
"You will shiver worse than that before we 
get through with you!" Conscious of our 
entire innocence, and thinking that only some 
kind of officers' mistake was being made, I was 
disposed to look upon the humorous side of the 
situation and smile inwardly, while on the out- 
side being entirely calm. 

Once dressed, we started down the sidewalk, 
but not hand-cuffed, one of the big policemen 
being with each of us. We were not long in 
doubt as to our destination. In a few moments 
we arrived at the police station and were se- 
curely locked in separate cages, with a solid 
wall between us, so that we could not communi- 
cate with each other even had we the wish to 
do so. A number of "vags" who had sought 
shelter for the night were in the open room, and 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 39 

one, coming up and peering at me through the 
open bars, said, "What're you in for? Drunk 
and disorderly?" 

"Not that," I answered, "I really don't 
know, but I suspect it is for stealing a horse and 
buggy." 

"Did you steal it?" he continued. 

"I did not," I replied. 

"Get a lawyer!" he advised, and gave way 
to a number of other "vags" who approached 
me; and after being identically catechised, I 
was given the unchangeable and same advice, 
"Get a lawyer." 

In the meantime, I had lost sight of my 
friend, Charlie. I could neither see nor com- 
municate with him in the adjoining cell, and I 
had been so busy answering the interrogatories 
of my hobo acquaintances as to give me little 
room for other thought. 

In a few more moments I saw Charlie being 
returned to his cage by a police officer. They 
had had him out and given him the third degree. 
The same policeman then came to my cage, 
unlocked it and took me into another large room 
resembling an ordinary justice court. A dozen 



40 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

uniformed police officers were lounging around, 
some walking about and others being seated, 
but none of them saying a word, and looking 
as dignified, fierce and stolid as possible. 

But hold! I am not telling this right; and 
unintentionally, almost omitted an important 
thing which really was the chief thing that put 
us in the bad fix we seemed to be in . 

When we were taken to police headquarters 
that evening, we were searched immediately, 
before we were locked up. Great pains were 
taken to go through every pocket. Upon me 
they found no weapon of any kind, not even a 
pen-knife, absolutely not one penny, no incrim- 
inating writing of any kind and only a harmless, 
friendly, social letter from my sister in Michigan. 
But when they came to Charlie, it was then he 
"shivered." And imagine my surprise, when 
in an inner pocket of my friend's coat (who had 
all along been telling me he was without a cent), 
they found a small chamois-skin purse contain- 
ing a single fifty-dollar bill with one end slightly 
torn, and one-hundred other dollars! 

"What have you here?" asked the officer, 
opening the purse. 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 41 

"Money," replied Charles. 

"But I thought you said you had no 
money," continued the officer. 

Charles made no reply, but looked per- 
turbed, and — shivered, casting a sheepish 
glance at me. 

And now, I too, was properly turned over 
to our police examination. Charlie had already 
been given the third degree and returned to 
his cage, without any opportunity for me to 
know what he had told or what had been done to 
him. Even though new in police methods 
(and this was my very first experience), the 
efficacy of this plan was immediately clear to me. 
Had we been guilty, we would have had no op- 
portunity for a frame-up, and each would have 
told a different story. Never for a single 
instant doubting Charlie's integrity, it only 
remained for me to tell them the exact truth, 
let them ask me what they would! 

I was now taken out of my cage and brought 
into a large room for the sweating process. 
A dozen police officers sat or lounged about, 
while back of the chief's table sat a dark-com- 
plexioned, wirey looking man about fifty years 



42' SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

of age, whom we immediately recognized as 
our ingratiating landlord. We afterwards 
learned that he had at one time been chief of 
police of that little city, and prided himself in 
no slight degree upon his ability to work up a 
case and run his victim to earth. His name 
was William Bruck. He at once opened up on 
me furiously, and in this fashion : 

"Well, you're a nice fellow, aren't you? 
Come into my house and do what you did! 
Didn't I treat you well? Didn't I tell you, you 
could have the best in the house? And do 
what you did! I suppose you know why you 
were arrested?" 

"No, I do not," I candidly admited, " unless 
it is for stealing my own horse and buggy." 

"You are not arrested for stealing a horse and 
buggy- You are arrested for stealing one 
hundred and fifty dollars from my wife's room. 
I don't say you took it, but your pardner did. 
We saw him go into her room when you were 
out in the office pretending to be talking to each 
other. I thought you said your pardner did 
not have any money; and yet we found one 
hundred and fifty dollars on him, including a 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 43 

fifty-dollar bill torn on one end, which both 
my wife and I can identify as the one she 
had in her pocketbook, and which she had 
been carrying for several weeks. Where did 
your pardner get it if he did not steal it from 
my wife's room? It's the same bill, and we can 
identify it." 

"Mr. Stauffer never left the room while I 
was there, and while I myself do not know 
where he got a fifty-dollar bill, and I did not even 
know he had one, Charlie Stauffer is not a thief, 
and is as straight as a string," said I, with some 
warmth, never for a single instant losing con- 
fidence in the integrity of my life-long friend, 
and wanning in his defense. 

It was clear by this time that they regarded 
Charlie as the more desperate of the two of us; 
possibly because he looked older, more manly 
and more mature, while I looked greener, more 
inoffensive and less capable of desperate deeds. 

Charlie was now returned to his cage below, 
while I was taken upstairs and locked in a large 
pleasant-appearing room, where I learned after- 
wards they were in the habit of putting refrac- 
tory women when under arrest. It contained a 



44 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

lounge and a couple of rocking chairs, a looking- 
glass, toilet rooms, and faucets with drinking 
water and water for washing. I could raise 
the window to admit air from the outside; and, 
but for the tell-tale bars that constantly re- 
minded the inmate of the true nature of the 
place the accommodations were good and the 
surroundings by no means disagreeable. 

I sat down and was really beginning to enjoy 
the change of conditions for myself, while re- 
gretting that Charlie was less fortunate and was 
compelled to remain in the cell below, when the 
door was unlocked, and that individual admitted 
by a turnkey whom we afterwards got to know 
pretty well as a clever, genial, ingratiating in- 
dividual who looked after "making things 
pleasant" and smoothing over matters — Mr. 
Sims. 

"Too bad, boys, " was his greeting. "But such 
is life, and make the best of it." I thought 
you boys would like it better to be together and 
have a room all to yourselves, and so I got per- 
mission of the chief-of-police to make this 
change. I trust you will approve of it. Would 
you like to look at today's issue of our city 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 45 

paper? I brought you up a copy. I 
believe there is some reference to this unfor- 
tunate affair therein." 

Charlie and I, delighted to meet each other 
again, eagerly accepted the paper, a large, city 
paper, published in Hamilton, Ohio, the name 
of which I do not now recollect. We were also 
handed a copy of the Cincinnati Inquirer, one 
of the most sensational papers in the United 
States. On the front page of the Hamilton 
paper, in glaring headlines was the announce- 
ment: 

AN IMPORTANT CATCH 

1 Our energetic and efficient police force 
covered themselves with additional glory last 
night, by promptly running down and arresting 
two suspicious characters before they had been 
in our city twenty-four hours. They gave the 
names of J. Connell and C. H . Stauffer, and 
claim to have driven through from Michigan, 
driving a horse with a roached mane, and a 
buggy manufactured in Albion, Michigan. 

They had been stopping at the popular hotel 
now run by our genial townsman and former 



46 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

chief- of -police, William Bruck. The same even- 
ing they arrived in our city, a saloon was burg- 
larized three doors from the Bruck Hotel, and 
suspicion at once pointed to these individuals. 

The next day one of the men attempted to get 
a draft for $167.65 cashed at the First National 
Bank, but of course was unsuccessful. When 
arrested, a fifty-dollar bill with a torn end was 
found in the purse of one of the men, and one 
hundred other dollars, although he had previous- 
ly stated that he had no money. It is not known 
yet whether the horse is a stolen animal of not, 
but so many horses have been stolen lately that 
the police are unusually vigilant. Both men 
are being held for developments. 

The police are assiduously working up a 
strong case, and are confident they have already 
sufficient evidence to convict. Both are fluent 
talkers and are very smooth people. 

Identical articles appeared in the Cincin- 
nati Inquirer, and, through the associated press, 
in many other papers throughout different parts 
of the country. Our home paper, a small 
weekly paper, copied it from the Grand Rapids, 
Michigan Papers; and one or two of the wags of 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 47 

Fennville, the little town from which we came, 
got busy and sprung something they regarded 
as humorous, but which the police looked upon 
in a serious light, or else they pretended to do 
so. And this caused us additional trouble. 

About two o 'clock in the afternoon, the chief - 
of-police, Mr. Thomas, a white-whiskered power- 
ful man, about sixty years of age, came up to 
our room, and said, "Here is a telegram for you 
boys. Is this from some of your pals, urging 
you to remain steadfast?" 

The telegram was post-marked, Fennville, 
Michigan, and addressed to "Connelland Stauf- 
fer, care chief-of -police, Hamilton, Ohio." 
It read, "Keep a stiff upper lip. We smoke 
Banners!" and was signed "Hopper and Hall". 

Hopper was the railroad agent at Fennville, 
and Hall, his assistant both of whom knew us 
well and saw the humor in our predicament. 
Every one, who could afford it, was at that 
time smoking an elegant, ten - cent cigar, 
called the "Banner," and our friends thought 
we ought to set them up. 

"What does this mean?" said the chief -of - 
police. " Is this a cipher message from some of 



48 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

your pals up in Michigan, urging you to keep 
a stiff upper lip? This is serious and I don't 
like the looks of it," he continued. 

"It's just an effort on the part of a couple 
fool friends of ours trying to be funny," I 
truthfully explained. ''Hopper is the station 
agent in our home town and Hall is a young 
man that is with him a good deal. It's just a 
practical joke. They see the humor of two 
fellows like Charlie and I being arrested on 
such a charge." 

"But how about this draft?" continued the 
chief. "Is that straight, and can you prove it 
is all right?" 

11 "It is unnecessary for us to disprove any 
charge. We are innocent before the law, and 
the burden of proof rests with the police depart- 
ment, " said I, once more warming up, and 
remembering that this is the theory of the 
American idea of justice, although in practice, 
it is not the way things are done at all. 

Go into any city or town in the United 
States and be arrested on any charge by some 
over-zealous officer who wishes to establish 
a name for himself, and you will be locked up 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 49 

until you can convince him you are innocent. 
And so, in real working out practice you are 
actually required to prove your innocence 
when any high-handed arrest is made, regardless 
of the beautiful idea that you are supposed to 
be innocent until you are proven guilty! All 
bosh ! Everything you do or say is construed 
as prime facie evidence of guilt, and you have 
to work like a Trojan to even get out of the 
police station ! 

"Wire the cashier of the Old State Bank, 
Fennville, Michigan, and I think he will remem- 
ber that he paid me this fifty-dollar bill with 
the end torn," said Charlie. 

"And," said I, "wire the president of the 
West Michigan Savings Bank, Bangor, Michi- 
gan, J. E- Sebring, and he will tell you that this 
draft is all right and so am I." 

In about two hours we were shown two 
strongly- worded trenchant telegrams from the 
two banks, and the chief of police unlocked the 
door and let us out. I then said, "The asso- 
ciated press has spread it all over the country 
about our arrest and they are already jollying 
us about it in our home town. Some people 



50 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

might think there is something in it. Would 
you mind writing a disclaimer and explain the 
mistake?" 

"Surely," said the genial Mr. Sims, and he 
wrote this, signing the names of Mayor Bosh 
and that of the chief of police, Mr. Thomas. 
To whom it may concern. — Whereas, Mr. 
James Connell and Mr. Charles H . Stauffer were 
arrested in this city on suspicion and detained 
for a short time, we take pleasure in saying we 
found them square and all right, and recommend 
them as first-class gentlemen. 

But, it was interesting to note, that when we 
were discharged, only three lines were given us, 
viz.; ''The men who were arrested the other 
day on the charge of stealing one hundred and 
fifty dollars from the room of ex-chief of police, 
Bruck, and attempting to pass a forged or 
stolen draft, were discharged today, no evidence 
being found against them." Yet, when we 
were in disrepute, and it was desirable to 
make us appear in a bad light, the same 
papers used a full column. And so it is in all 
the world. It is a long story when something 
comes out bad against you ; and people seem 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 51 

disappointed when they find that it is not true, 
and begrudge saying a very few, short words 
correcting the error that they seem to regret is 
an error. 

But I must not forget our dinner the first 
day that Charlie and I were put together in the 
woman's room upstairs. Promptly at twelve 
o'clock, the genial Mr. Sims unlocked the door 
of our room, and coming briskly in, said, " Here 
boys, I have brought your dinner. I hope you 
will like it." He set on the table steaming hot 
coffee, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, hot 
biscuits, condiments, and some kind of meat 
roast about the size, and having the appear- 
ance of an ordinary sized pug dog. We at first 
eyed it with suspicion, but being hungry to the 
point of the ravenous, in another moment we 
"set to", and devoured the thing, all but a few 
of the very small bones. And all of the few 
bones were small, slender, and resembled 
nothing that we had ever seen in an animal of 
that size. " Of course it cannot be a pug dog", 
we smilingly decided. "The bones would be 
larger, and besides they would not give us dog 
in the United States. They do that in Turkey. 



52 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

But what is it? That's the question! It's 
fatter, and not quite the right shape for a coon ; 
and, it is not a young pig, because we were 
raised on a farm, and know all about pigs! 
And this is not one! No part of a cow could 
be cut in this shape, and have the same taste. 
It's the whole of some kind of an animal." 

After much thought we finally decided it 
must be a possum, but even this did not quite 
answer the specifications. However, it was the 
best we could do . It was a strange case ; and we 
have always been in doubt as to the identity of 
that strange animal, and I fear we always will 
be. 

After we got out of that scrape it was ten 
years before I dared leave my first class hotel 
in any strange town, and wander out on the 
street, for fear I would be picked up by a police 
officer, and charged with some real or pretended 
offense that I had heard nothing about and 
knew nothing about. I "stayed in close" for a 
good many years, but in the last dozen years I 
am becoming reckless and more or less fearless 
again. Still, I am not sure we could blame the 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 53 

police officers. After we were released, the 
chief of police showed us twelve different postal 
cards with descriptions of horses stolen in that 
part of the country. One answered the des- 
cription of our little horse, Freddy, and on this 
description they suspected us. 



CHAPTER VI 

Then he took up the battle of life again say- 
ing only, "It might have been.'' 

— Whittier 

For a variety of reasons, many of which seem 
sufficient, I never married, but unfortunately 
lived to be an old bachelor, — at this writing, 
forty- two years of age. Just why this has been 
the case, whether from lack of an opportunity, 
or other sufficient reasons, it does not seem 
necessary to state. But I believe it is safe to 
say, that the average old bachelor never ceases 
to fall in love; and, is often painfully reminded 
by the meeting of chance acquaintances of the 
happy days forever past, of the times that will 
not come again, and of the mistakes that can 
never be corrected in all the years to come! 
And so, on my way north I had a little chance ex- 
perience that set thoughts of the sad Maud 
Muller, and the still more disconsolate Judge, 
running through my mind. On leaving Knox- 
ville, Tennessee, and driving west and then 
north on my way to northern Indiana, I had a 
pleasant experience that is almost as dreamy 



54 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 55 

as the airy substance of which dreams are made. 
And because of this, and because I was younger 
then and am older now, it remains as a delight- 
ful exotic experience that memory cannot 
quite forget. 

I could not find the place again in a hundred 
years if I tried, but some where, I do not know 
where, along the banks of the Nola Chucky 
river in sunny Southern Tennessee, there is a 
little town or hamlet, called Kingston, or was 
twenty years ago. I got in there one evening 
and stopped at some little rooming house, I do not 
know where, putting out my little horse, Freddy, 
at a nearby livery stable. And at this rooming 
house, a private house, I met the landlady's 
daughter, whom I thought was the most unusual, 
extraordinary, and beautiful woman I ever saw. 

It would be folly for me to say a single word 
by way of description. I never try it, and only 
think of dark-brown, southern eyes and hair, a 
perfect form, infinite grace, that she lived in 
Kingston on the banks of the Nola Chucky 
River, and that her name was Emma Lindi. 

In this case, remembrance would not seem 
so strange in a young man of twenty years, but 



56 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

it is strange that a middle-aged man of forty- 
two does not forget. How I learned her name 
I can never recall, for I was not introduced to 
her; and, while we engaged in social conversa- 
tion during the evening, any effort on my part 
to become more friendly and intimately ac- 
quainted was effectively and genteelly dis- 
couraged. There was an old bachelor there who 
was quite in love with her then, as I am half 
in love with her memory now, but she quietly 
held his ardor in check by saying, "You are too 
old. I prefer and will tolerate no one but a 
young man." 

Leaving Kingston, Tennessee, I pushed 
steadily northward the next morning, and in 
a comparatively short time reached the Ohio 
River, and crossed over into Evansville, Indiana. 
Having now something of the sensation that I 
was more on domestic, and not on foreign soil, 
I sought out and drove northward, along and 
very close to the banks of the beautiful Wabash 
River. 

It was here that I heard, late one moon- 
light night, while driving gaily along, the 
beautiful song now well-known and sung all 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 57 

over the country. However, even as well-known 
as it is, I am not quite sure I remember the title, 
if indeed I ever knew it, but the chorus runs: 

"The moon shines bright tonight along the 

Wabash, 
From the fields there comes the breath of 

new-mown hay; 
Through the sycamores the candle lights 

are gleaming 
On the banks of the Wabash far away." 

And the staging was perfect for the beautiful 
song. It was in the early autumn time, the 
air soft and balmy, and the moonlight softly fall- 
ing on the quietly moving waters of the Wabash. 
I was driving along the historic river 
with rows of tall sycamores on either side 
through which the cottage candle-lights could 
be distinctly seen, and from the fields came 
truly "the breath of new-mown hay," while 
our way was made almost light by the innu- 
merable fire-flies or lightning bugs that filled 
the air. And then, with heart hopeful for the 
future, yet filled with sad memories of the dead 
past, — the male quartette's perfect symphony, 
the fire-flies, sycamores, and rushing river made 
a perfect setting, and left an impression that 



58 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

has been with me every moment even to this 
day. 

But, before going further up into Indiana, 
I want to tell the reader of a little experience 
I had just on the border-line separating Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee, and which I unintention- 
ally passed over without notice. Permit me 
to come back to it now. 

In pushing northward from Tennessee, and 
trying to reach some little town in Kentucky, 
I found myself, late one evening, approaching 
a point on the boundary line of Southern Ken- 
tucky and Northern Tennessee. I think 
"point" would be the proper word, as there was 
no town there, and not even enough buildings 
to call it a "place" '. There was nothing there 
but a saloon, a dance hall, and as I learned that 
night, a very nice residence a little beyond, 
owned by a typical southern gentleman of the 
better class, a man perhaps sixty-five years of 
age. Night had come on suddenly and it was 
getting quite dark as I was driving along, headed 
for this point, when three horsemen rode up 
from behind, one shouting, ''Hey, stranger, 
what's your name? Where have you been and 
where are you going?" 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 59 

"My name is Connell," I said. "I have 
just come from Knoxville, Tennessee, and am 
going to Valparaiso, Indiana. What is your 
name?" 

"My name is Jones," he said. "And mine, 
Smith," "and mine, Brown," repeated the 
others in unison. 

"Do you ever drink?" 

"I should say I did," I replied, "if I ever 
have a chance." 

Now the truth is, I don't drink at all, but 
I drank that night, or rather I pretended to 
drink and I always felt I was justified in the 
deception. I never drink when I am master 
of myself and the situation, and this night, 
when under duress and in self-defense virtually 
forced into telling and acting a lie, I felt, at least 
to some extent, not wholly at fault. Remem- 
bering Shakespeare's suggestion that "dis- 
cretion is the better part of valor," I did not 
regard the time as being opportune for a tem- 
perance address, and so I drank good old 
Kentucky moonshine whiskey, and out of 
half-a-dozen bottles at the same time, or at 
least, the boys thought I did. 

The boys were convivial, drunk and friendly, 



60 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

and they all crowded around me on both sides 
with their horses; and, in an excess of cordiality, 
all said at once and in the same breath, "Try 
some of this," each one proffering me a bottle 
out of either hand, and all at the same instant. 
As it was so dark by this time that I could not 
see them so as to distinguish one from the other, 
I had to be guided entirely by their different 
voices. Always naturally friendly to a degree 
myself, but never entirely forgetful, I asked 
one of the boys on horse back nearest to me 
to get in the buggy and ride with me, letting 
one of the other boys lead his horse. He did so, 
at once proffered me a drink out of three bottles 
at the same time, and instantly pulled a gun 
out of his pocket and began shooting, first on 
one side of Freddy near his feet, and then on 
the other side. 

I have since thought that the odorous 
moonshine must have gone to my head that 
night, even though I did not drink any, because 
I did not seem to mind his shooting very much ; 
while, under normal conditions, I would have 
been concerned by having a half-drunk Ken- 
tucky hot-blood thrust upon me in the dark, 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 61 

with an overload of booze and a gattling gun. 

I feared he might shoot my little horse, 
Freddy. I did not remonstrate, lest I might 
complicate matters; and again, remembering 
Shakespeare's adage, " Striving to better, oft 
we mar what's well, " I let things go as they were, 
and at a propitious moment, said in my mildest 
tone, "I can see you are a good shot. Don't 
mar your good record by hitting my horse." 

"You have nothing to fear, stranger. I 
am the best shot in Tennessee, only I am frank 
to say I am not quite so accurate when I have 
been drinking. But I haven't taken enough 
tonight to hurt, and I can shoot almost as well 
in the dark as I can in broad daylight. No, 
don't you worry about me. I won't hurt your 
horse," he continued, firing another broadside, 
first on one side and then on the other of that 
patient animal. 

"How far is it to the 'point'? And is there 
any place there where I can stay all night?" 

"We will be there in another hour," he 
replied, "and there is no place to stay unless 
the doctor would let you stay at his house. 
He lives just the other side of the dance hall. 



62 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

"But hold! There is going to be a dance 
there tonight and all of the boys are going. My 
two friends and I are on our way there now. 
Why not come to the dance with us and go back 
home and stay with us. You would be entirely 
welcome and we would be glad to have you." 

And for a moment I thought seriously of 
doing so. But I almost immediately remem- 
bered the moonshine whiskey and the reckless 
fire-arms, neither of which goes well with the 
other. 

My better judgment came back and 
I courteously and honestly replied, "I really 
would like to very much and I thank you 
for your cordial offer and good will, but I am 
getting older and I don't stay out so late 
nights, and I believeit would be wise to go right 
up to the doctor's when we get there, if you will 
kindly show me the way to his residence." 

" I will be glad to do so," he replied. 

In half an hour we had reached a little store, 
and the two other boys horseback coming 
up behind, my three friends left me for the 
dance-hall, first pointing out the doctor's house 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 63 

in the pitch dark a quarter of a mile straight 
ahead. 

As this seemed to be the only recourse, 
it was idle to falter or hesitate. So, without an 
instant's delay I said, "Go on, Freddy," 
and we started out in the blinding darkness to 
find the house. As near as I could tell, for I 
could see nothing, there seemed to be a deep cut 
in the middle of the road, with banks perhaps 
ten or fifteen feet high on either side. 

After driving perhaps a quarter of a mile, I 
could see lights on the left hand side above the 
bank, and not far from the road, which indicat- 
ed the probable location of the residence of the 
doctor. 

In the southern country, at least wherever 
I have been, it is customary to call when ap- 
proaching the house, so the people will have an 
opportunity to call-off their dogs and let you in. 

In order to do this, I had to take the desper- 
ate chance of driving up on this narrow bank 
with horse and carriage in the absolu tely ' ' brea th - 
less darkness", without knowing whether it was 
wide enough to hold a buggy or not, or how far 
you would fall if you fell off the bank. 



64 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

But there was no other alternative, so with 
out any unseemly hesitation or a moment's de- 
lay I drove up on the bank, and, guided by the 
light that seemed to be in the house, stopped 
and called, ' ' Hello ! hello ! hello ! ' ' No one coming 
to the door, I called again and again, until after 
a time a door opened cautiously and an elderly 
man's voice said, ''What's wanted?" 

"I want to stay all night and put out my 
horse," I said. "I have a horse and carriage 
and have just driven through from Knoxville, 
Tennessee, and I am on my way north to Val- 
paraiso, Indiana. I am originally a Michigan 
man, about thirty years of age, not married, 
and not used to the ways of this country. I 
used to be a school teacher, and am now in the 
optical business," said I, all in one breath, so as 
to give the information complete and get the 
whole thing through with at once. 

"Can you let me stay all night? I want to 
leave and get started on my way the first 
thing in the morning." 

"Wait a moment and I will come out," he 
said, and taking his lantern, started for the 
buggy. 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 65 

1 The reason I was so slow about answering 
you and coming out, is that it is getting late and 
this is a pretty rough part of the country. 
I usually want to see who the folks are and what 
shape they are in, before I go to the door. We 
are just over the Kentucky line and there is 
a saloon just across the border over in Tennessee 
and it's pretty rough. We will put out your 
horse, and after we have supper I will tell you 
about it." 

We took the lantern, and after watering 
and feeding Freddy, returned to the house 
where we were joined by the doctor's w'fe, 
after which we sat down to a delicious 
dinner of sweet potatoes, pork chops, cornbread, 
Irish potatoes, white bread, coffee, and desert. 

After dinner, the doctor, now clearly seen to 
be a gray-haired man, but active, and perhaps 
about sixty years of age, said, "This country is 
a little rough, and I did not quite know whether 
to go to the door or not until I first saw who it 
was; and for that reason I temporized. 

"We are right on the border line between 
Tennessee and Kentucky, and such places are 
nearly always rough. My house is in Kentucky! 



66 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

and less than a quarter of a mile from here on 
the Tennessee side is a saloon where people drink 
a good deal, and there is often trouble. There 
*s a dance-hall just across the street from there, 
and I believe they have a dance tonight. 
They always have trouble, and it is a good thing 
you did not go. There was trouble an hour or 
two ago in the negro part of this locality, and 
two men were shot, one being injured quite 
severely, while one negro was slashed with a 
razor. 

"I am on good terms with every one, 
and I do not believe there is a single man who 
would do me an intentional injury, but they all 
carry guns, and when crazed with whiskey, 
they are not always to be depended upon. 
So when night comes, I am very careful about 
answering a call at the door, as I cannot always 
tell if it is a sincere respectable call, or some ir- 
responsible 'drunk' looking for trouble." 

When I told him I never touched a drop, but 
was virtually forced to pretend to drink when 
overtaken by a lot of drunken fellows on their 
way to the dance, he said, "You did quite right. 
Had you refused they would have made you 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 67 

trouble; and as you are without means of de- 
fense and entirely at their mercy you might have 
been seriously maltreated. I congratulate you 
on your diplomacy and good sense." 

The doctor's home surroundings showed 
evidence of refinement and some means, and in 
many other respects indicated that they had 
come from the better and cultured class of 
people. 

Being shown my bedroom, a large room 
with high ceiling, I found a large, old-fashioned 
bedstead with a modern, expensive mattress. 
I disrobed and retired at once; and pretty 
thoroughly exhausted by the day's journey, 
fell asleep almost immediately, only awakening 
when the sun's rays fell upon my face in the 
morning. I arose at once and hastening to the 
dining room upon the call of breakfast, enjoyed 
the true, open-hearted hospitality of an educat- 
ed, chivalrous, cultured gentleman and his wife, 
and the best breakfast I ever had in the south. 

After breakfast, declining the pay I tendered 
for the night's entertainment, the doctor and 
I harnessed Freddy, and I continued my 
journey. 



CHAPTER VII. 

And still to win, all the world to nothing. 

— King Richard III. 

I now take the reader with me to Valpar- 
aiso, Indiana, the location of the largest and 
best private University in the United States. 
At the end of a few more days I had finished 
my drive through the entire length of the 
Hoosier State, from Evansville, Indiana to 
Valparaiso, in the northern and western part 
of the state forty -four miles east of Chicago. 

Having long been interested in the science 
of optometry, I left my horse and buggy 
in Valparaiso and went at once to Chi- 
cago where I took a thorough course in opto- 
metry, receiving the degree of Doctor of 
Ophthalmology. After matriculating, I returned 
to Valparaiso and opened an optical office over 
Collins' drug store on College Avenue. 

Having been at considerable expense in the 
previous two or three years, and my trip through 
Kentucky and Tennessee being without finan- 

68 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 69 

cial profit, but only a considerable expense, I 
began to feel I must buckle on my whole armor 
in an earnest, effort to immediately recuperate. 

I had paid out a good deal of money during 
this time, and had taken in very little. My fin- 
ancial resources were not yet exhausted, but 
were getting low. A well-established optical 
business in the student section of Valparaiso, 
near the University which had a stud- 
ent attendance of several thousand young 
men and women each term, seemed to look good 
for a successful business. I spared no pains in 
seeing that Mr. Collins furnished the two rooms 
well; the one, my office and the other, my 
sleeping apartment. I advertised extensively 
and thoroughly; purchased all the latest im- 
proved optical instruments for diagnosing and 
correcting errors of refraction, and had a sign 
painted and placed outside: Dr. J.Connell, Eye 
Glass Specialist. EXAMINATION FREE. 

My office was soon so overrun with stu- 
dents whose eyes needed attention, that I had 
to enlarge my quarters and see patients only 
by appointment. The business side was going 
all right, and this gave me an opportunity to 



70 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

turn my attention occasionally to the humor- 
ous, and once in a while, devise means of 
having a little fun. 

The boys I fell in with were the nicest 
fellows in the world. I still remain on close 
terms of friendship with most of them, although 
a few have gotten away with whereabouts 
unknown . 

A. L. Collins, the genial, gentlemanly 
proprietor of the drug store on College Hill 
at that time, has for a number of years 
been traveling for some wholesale drug house, 
while the equally genial drug clerk, G. R. Jones, 
has studied dentistry, and has long been the 
best known and most popular dentist in Val- 
paraiso, — Dr. Geo. R. Jones. 

Just back of my office rooms, was another 
suite of rooms where roomed two students: 
one, H. L. Stratton and the other, a Mr. 
Kilgore. I had more fun with those two boys 
than it would be possible to ever fully tell! 

Stratton was keen and bright as a dollar, 
but when a child, had met with some kind of 
an accident which had left him somewhat de- 
formed, his back not being entirely normal. 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 71 

Stratton never had any money, and no chance 
to make any, while his father was wealthy, or 
at least so he said, a man owning a large number 
of race horses. 

Kilgore, now Dr. Kilgore, was then a minor 
"with a guardian." Kil's guardian would never 
come through with quite enough money to keep 
him going, and so he too, was having troubles. 

One day I happened in his room and he was 
sewing up a rent in a pair of trousers. 

"I've got a guardian," he said, humorously, 
as soon as I got my head inside the door. " And 
I have to do my own tailoring! Now these will 
be pretty things to wear, even after I get them 
fixed. My father was wealthy, and left me 
fifty thousand dollars; but I have a 'guardian', 
so I can't get a dollar until I am twenty- 
one. I need clothes, or at least, a pair of pants. 
I am ashamed to be seen on the street. I 
haven't money enough to buy a postage stamp, 
am boarding at the cheapest student place- 
in town and am in arrears for my board even 
there. I am sick of it!" 

"Cheer up, my friend, the worst is still to 
come," said Stratton, that moment stepping 



72 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

in the door. "My father has money, too, 
but that don 't help me any. I need a few things 
myself. Look at these hand-me-downs that 
I am wearing. I would like a change, too, 
from the student diet, and would prefer to go 
to the hotel for a few days, but I am not per- 
mitted to do so. I am hungry! I'd like to 
lean up against a smoke-house." 

Some days I would do a splendid business 
and would keep it up for several weeks, when 
I would have all kinds of money. And then, 
again, things would drop off all at once, and in 
spite of my best advertising, I would not fit 
a pair of glasses in a month. What money I 
had, would then soon go, and the first thing 
some morning I would wake up to find myself 
in worse shape than Strat or Kil ever were, 
and without money enough to be comfortable. 
At such times as these, instead of becoming dis- 
consolate, the humorous side of the situation 
would occur to me, and I would get a whole lot 
of fun out of life by turning my attention to 
my friends, Strat and Kil. 

One hot day in August, after the boys had 
been giving me a dissertation on how hard 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 73 

up they were, and when they had gone down 
stairs for a moment, I slipped quietly into their 
room and built up the hottest fire that they 
had known since Christmas. 

It was "dogdays", with people dropping 
dead on the streets of Chicago, and farm 
wives all over the state of Indiana, using 
their summer kitchens. 

I hurried down stairs the back way. 

The boys, seeing smoke coming out of the 
chimney, were both upstairs in less than a 
minute. Kil was actually profane while Strat- 
ton threw a pitcher down the stairs after me, 
which nearly caught me before I could get to 
the foot; and then, picking up a large lamp 
he was on the point of throwing that also, 
when he was dissuaded. 

The boys then went down to make their 
complaint to Al Collins. Kil was spokesman. 
"I wouldn't care," he said, "if it was winter, 
but here it is the middle of August, with people 
dropping dead all over the United States from 
excessive heat. We've got to sleep in that 
room tonight and there is not a breath of air 
stirring and hasn't been all day." 



74 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

I don't know how he did it, but Mr. Collins 
fixed the matter up in some way, while I was 
afraid to go down stairs and into the drug store 
for a week, for fear of running into the two boys 
but normal conditions were soon restored. 

One day a young man came into my office 
and inquired if I was the "glass-eyed spec- 
ialist." I corrected him pleasantly by saying 
that I was the Eye-Glass Specialist, and that 
my business was fitting glasses and correcting 
errors of refraction. The information did not 
seem to be entirely understood or wholly com- 
prehended, however, because the next day 
he called on me again, and said his eyes ached 
so he could hardly study; that the letters all 
ran together and he wanted a pair of glassses. 

After examining his eyes and fitting him, 
he said, "I wanted them yesterday, but you 
did not seem to understand." 

At this time I had my horse and carriage 
in Valparaiso, and one day I drove out with my 
two friends, Stratton and Kilgore, to Flint Lake, 
a beautiful sheet of water about a mile in length 
and equally as wide, a few miles north of Val- 
paraiso. The beautiful banks of this lake are 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 75 

ideal for social parties and entertainments, while 
the waters of the lake are equally ideal for 
bathing. 

I cannot recall how we did it, because I 
know every one of us was "broke", but we all 
went bathing, and afterward hired a boat, 
rowed around the lake and had a good time 
generally. 

With the day done we drove leisurely back 
and returned to our old rooms above Collins' 
drug store, my friends having forgotten by this 
time the incident of the August fire. 

My optical business was good that year, my 
work satisfactory, and I was beginning to know 
nearly everybody while nearly everybody knew 
me. 

The next year a building was erected 
in the next block, and I left my old quar- 
ters and engaged office rooms in the new 
building then owned by a delightful gentle- 
man, Mr. John D. Urban s, now dead. Every- 
thing was new, — building, carpets and entire 
furnishings. I took up quarters there in the 
spring, and the summer passed away as a 
pleasant dream, with a good business in the 



76 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

optical line and a pleasant, social time among 
my new-formed acquaintances. 

At length, fall came and passed, almost im- 
mediately bringing winter upon us. 

At that time, Dodge's magnificent telegraph 
institute was not occupying its present splen- 
did, commodius quarters; but being younger 
then, was located overhead in the building ad- 
joining Urbans', where I had my offices. 

Neither steam heat nor hot air was available 
then, and I kept up heat by means of hard 
nut-coal and a small stove. The winter had 
started in at once severe, and, "as misfortunes 
never come singly, ' ' my optical business dropped 
off suddenly, and do what I would in the way 
of my old-time and best advertising, I could 
get no one in the office nor could I fit a pair 
of glasses. 

My funds ran low and finally disappeared 
entirely, so that I was unable even to mail a 
letter. My room-rent was fortunately paid 
in advance when I was "flush" and at the time 
I engaged the rooms. And, as I was known 
to the boarding house keeper, I could "stand 
her off" until the dawn of better days. 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 77 

But the" feature" was the petty little laun- 
dry bill that must be paid, and the coal bill, 
for, the coal man, like Shy lock, invariably de- 
mands his pound of flesh, — before the coal is 
delivered. 

But I must have coal! The weather con- 
tinued to get colder and colder, and while busi- 
ness got no better, it got no worse. It could 
not, for I had not taken in a dollar in three 
months nor had I seen one — of my own. 

One day Vic John came in and said, "Dr. 
Conn ell, I would like to room with you. I am 
a telegraph student, and finish my course this 
year. Where I am, the place is old and the 
accommodations poor. You have a nice, new, 
clean building and delightful rooms. You are 
an old telegraph operator, and I know you well 
enough by reputation to feel that w r e will get 
along well together. I want to room with you, 
and of course will pay half of the expenses." 

"I will be glad to have you," I returned. 
"Bring your things right up." 

During this talk I had kept warm on the 
exercise (and John on the excitement) of 
thinking of a pleasant change in quarters. 



78 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

Essential heat was for the moment forgotten 
by both of us, or at least not mentioned. 

That evening after supper, John brougjit 
his things over, and after we had sat around in 
the cold for half an hour he said, "It's a beastly 
cold night, and getting colder every minute. 
I am frozen stiff. Did the fire go out on you, 
Doc? If you will tell me where you keep your 
kindling and coal, I'll start it for you." And 
then I pulled both triggers and gave the poor 
fellow both barrels. 

4 'The truth is John, I've been keeping up a 
front for a month. I haven't a sou, and 
haven't taken in a dollar for about thirty days. 
I haven 't any coal, nor any money with which 
to get coal." 

"Immortal Caesar!" he ejaculated. "I am 
against it worse than if I had stayed where I 
was. I am 'all in' financially, too, to my very 
last sou ! I was frozen out by this cold snap 
and thought I'd be all right if I got in with 
you, because you always look as if you were 
prosperous, and seem to be making money all 
the time." 

"And I do, part of the time, but not all of 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 79 

the time," I returned. "Stand it tonight. I 
may have some money tomorrow, and will then 
get some coal. We will have to take a chance, 
and if it fails, try something else." 

The next day came, and the next night also, 
bringing to us cold, but no coal — and no 
money! And I want to say here, in paren- 
thesis, that this happened some years ago, I being 
younger and tenderer then than I am now, 
would not for the world have asked a coal man 
to trust me for a quarter of a ton of coal, or let 
any one know I was short of money, unless 
driven to it and obliged to do so. 

Things have changed since then, and I 
have been hard up so often, and under stress 
of adverse circumstances literally forced to 
ask for favors, against which my prouder 
spirit revolted, that such a condition would 
not now embarrass me in the least. I would 
simply approach the coal man, talk both 
arms and legs off, and get the coal — if I 
could. 

But then it was different. Being in a 
college town, and accustomed to playing pranks 
on each other, I saw an opportunity to have a 



80 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

little fun and enjoy the escapade, besides getting 
the coal. 

Later in life, and under different cir- 
cumstances, with different feelings and mo- 
tives, such a proceeding would unquestionably 
come under the head of a theft, although 
not a very considerable one. 

But, not so with a boy and a student. 
At the present time — at forty- two years of 
age, I notice that I see almost everything in a 
very different light than I did when I was 
twenty - five, and now do not sympathize 
with, but frown upon the boyish college es- 
capades. This probably is what age does. 
It causes us to change our opinions, and a 
changed opinion is often an evidence of age. 

In the University part of the city, in the 
part known as the Hill (College Hill), boxes for 
coal were found back of the houses where 
students roomed. These boxes were num- 
bered to correspond with the number of 
the room, and were usually, although not always, 
locked with a padlock, the student to whom the 
box belonged, retaining the key. 

The school idea in Valparaiso is to work, 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 81 

and work hard every minute! Fraternities 
and athletics, while not forbidden, are not en- 
couraged, and hence there are no "rushes", no 
"pranks" and no "hoodlumism". I think I was 
the only hoodlum on College Hill, and having a 
more or less innocent manner, was quite un- 
suspected of being anything but "straight" and 
a gentleman. 

President Brown and Prof. Kinsey often 
used to say in their chapel talks, "You are 
known here only by your work. It don't make 
any difference how much money you have. 
You are known here by your work." 

Every student who attends that institu- 
tion almost instantly inbibes or acquires 
that spirit, and it remains with him through 
life. Hence nearly every one of the students 
succeeds in the "battle of life." I have never 
known, or even heard of a single failure. 
The influence exerted and the spirit acquired 
are simply marvelous! 

After moving from over Collins' Drug 
Store and into the new Urbans Building, 
I enrolled as a student in the scientific depart - 

it of the University, graduating in 1897 



82 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

But John and I had to have some coal, and 
right off ! Seeing an opportunity to have some 
fun out of the escapade, besides actually needing 
the coal, I said to John, "After supper tonight 
we will wait until about ten o'clock, and then 
go out and borrow some from the boys. I 
know several whom I am sure do not keep their 
coal bins locked. We will each take a scuttle 
and if we can get these full, we can warm up 
this room, and so stand it another day. By 
that time maybe one of us can make the 
raise of some money." (This was before I 
registered in the school.) 

Night came, and after supper, John prac- 
ticing telegraphy in the other room, and I try- 
ing to figure out the proper demonstration for 
a proposition in geometry, we waited for ten 
o 'clock when those on the street would go home 
and the boys in their rooms to bed. 

At last the coast seemed clear, and each 
taking a coal scuttle, we started out. I went 
back of Collins' drug store, where I knew there 
were some unlocked boxes full of coal, and sent 
John to the rear of the first house on the same 
side of the street in the next block, on College 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 83 

Avenue. Nor was I without some trepidation. 
I was supposed to be respectable. I would not 
have been caught for the world, and I was in 
fear lest I would at any instant run into that 
watchful night police-officer, Mike Kelley, who 
knew me well and might not be disposed to look 
upon it as the joke I was trying to make myself 
believe it was. 

I got about half a scuttle of coal, and was 
hurrying back to my room, when I was over- 
taken by John, on the dead run with an empty 
coal scuttle. He came up and said, "That was 
the biggest dog I ever saw." 

"Tell us about it," I persisted. 

"Wait until we get to the room," he said- 

Going immediately to our cold room, 
John put some kindling in the stove, lit 
it and using the half bucket of coal I had 
filched from one of my student friends, 
we had the first hot fire I had felt in that room 
for nearly a month. 

We got ourselves warm, and John, set- 
tling deep down in the rocking cha 1 'r, said, 
"Yes sir, that was the biggest dog I ever 
saw. I believe he was savage too. He must 



84 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

have been chained or he would have got me. 
The coal was in the shed and I had to go in 
there in the dark, when that man-eater growled 
and sprang for me. Had I not overtaken you, 
I 'd have been running yet. " And the humor of 
the joke did not appeal to me, either. Nor did 
I ever really appreciate the supposed humor 
of snipe-hunting, stealing watermelons, and 
hazing Freshmen in college, although I have 
helped to do all these things. 

And yet one or two snipe-hunting escapades 
are worth remembering for the simple reasons 
that I cannot forget them and they are perhaps 
worth telling. 

Dr. F. C. Jarvis is now a prominent and suc- 
cessful dentist, with office for the past two 
years in Kalispelle, Montana; but, at the time of 
this escapade he was the courteous, smartly - 
dressed and well-behaved clerk in the post- 
office in the little town of Fennville, Michigan. 
At that time I was night operator in the same 
town, which was on the old Chicago and West 
Michigan Railroad, now the Pere Marquette ; 
and Dr. Jarvis was plain "Cordy Jarvis." 

I believe it was some time in the early 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 80 

summer of 1894 when some of the boys and my- 
self conceived the idea of taking Cordy and 
Frank Hoyt out snipe-hunting. To be abso- 
lutely honest about the matter, this old chest- 
nut was brand new to me then, and they could 
have just as easily taken me out as Cordy and 
Frank. I would have fallen for it in a minute, 
I am almost sure the thing would have looked 
all right to me, and it don't look so very un- 
reasonable to me even yet. But, for some 
reason or other, perhaps because Jarvis was 
a gentlemanly kind of a fellow and just the 
essence of politeness and decency, while Frank 
it was known, would stay with any kind of a 
proposition until the cows came home and 
then not quit — they decided to take the two 
boys. 

For two full days prior to the "drive " that 
evening, we spent most of our time making it 
clear to the two boys that the snipe season was 
then at its height, and that we would be quite sure 
to make a rich haul ; while I myself courteously 
offered to make arrangements for the h and ling of 
the snipe with a Chicago Commission House for 
whom I had been working. I loaned my rail- 



86 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

road lantern for the occasion, and after all, 
the joke was on me, as I had to go after it the 
next day, a mile away in a kind of swamp, 
only to find the oil all burned out, the wick 
burned off and the chimney so smoked it took 
me half a day at hard labor to get the lantern 
in presentable and serviceable shape again. 

The following was the line-up of the snipe- 
hunting party as I remember it: C. Iy. Fosdick, 
Charles H. Stauffer, Charlie Secord, Charlie 
Freeman and myself, with the two mascots, 
Cordy Jarvis and Frank Hoyt to hold the sack. 

On the way out to the snipe-hunting grounds 
I gave Cordy this line of talk. "Now I like to 
go all right, but its no fun and no easy thing to 
have to run all over the field in the dark help- 
ing to drive them in. I haven't done any hard 
physical work since I was a kid and I don 't know 
whether I could stand it or not. I am going to 
ask the boys to let me hold the sack. It takes 
two of us to do that. That is the easiest job. 
Iyet some of these young, husky fellows go out 
and drive them in. I am going to hold the 
sack, although it will be just like Stauffer and 
Freeman and Fosdick to oppose it." 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 87 

"I will hold the sack, too, if they will let 
me," said Jarvis. 

We had now reached the sniping-glbunds; 
the sack was properly adjusted and my rail- 
road lantern placed in the mouth to attract 
the snipe. I here made a formal motion that 
I be one of the two that was permitted to 
hold the sack, but it was promptly voted down, 
and Hoyt and Jarvis selected by acclamation. 

Never did a man do a more cowardly or de- 
ceitful thing in his life! When the two boys 
crowded about me to express sympathy and 
regret that I had been defeated in the vote, 
I reached out, shook hands with them and con- 
gratulated them on their success. The boys 
held the sack, and the rest of us went back 
to the depot! Cliff Fosdick, who was almost 
a perfect penman, at once got busy and wrote 
a number of placards which he hung on the 
walls of the post-office building and in the win- 
dows, the outer door being unlocked so we 
could go in. 

"Snipe for Sale!" "Coming in Coveys!" 
"Leave your orders for snipe early!" "If you 
want the best snipe come to us!" etc. 

Signed : Jarvis and Hoyt, 
Professional Snipe-Hunters. 



88 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

This is what Cordy had to face the next 
morning when he opened up the post office and 
had to hand out the mail and explanations 
to five-hundred patrons in this small town. 
But both Hoyt and Jarvis were gentlemen, 
and "game", and won in life, where many of 
the jokers failed. 

I believe another snipe-hunting narrative 
would not be entirely out of place and I want 
to review the one following: 

In the year 1900, when I was principal of the 
public schools in Big Timber, Montana, a young, 
gaudily-dressed fellow struck the town, intro- 
ducir.g and putting in "traveling" public 
libraries. His name was Eastman, and he 
registered at the Grand Hotel where I was 
stopping. He was a genial, friendly, social 
fellow, bright and dressed in the height of the 
latest eastern fashion; but he was entirely un- 
acquainted with western manners, methods and 
morals; and to "reduce him" and bring him 
down to the commom level, the boys in some 
way obtained access to his sleeping room, and 
cow-itched his underwear. 

The next evening after I had returned to 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 89 

the hotel from school, he met me and asked 
me to go with him for a ride of four or five miles 
out in the country, where he wished to see 
some one about establishing a library in the 
neighborhood. We had no sooner got started 
than he began to itch, and waiting until we were 
out of the town and alone on a quiet country 
road, he suddenly drew up his horse and said, 
"Professor, I actually believe I am lousy. Is 
that hotel entirely respectable? I wouldn't get 
body lice for a million dollars. I had them once, 
caught them of some lumber jack in Muskegon, 
Michigan. I did not get rid of them for six 
months, and I could neither sleep nor stay 
awake. This feels to me just like gray-backs." 
Not knowing at that time the nature of cow- 
itch myself, and not knowing that the boys 
had put some on his clothes, I said, "The Grand 
is the best hotel in the place, and Mr. Bliss is 
too good a hotel man to have any lice in his 
beds. It must be something else." 

"Well, I can't stand it any longer, and I 
am going to let this trip out and turn right 
around and go back to the hotel and take a bath 
and change my underwear. Maybe that 



90 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

will discourage them, whatever they are." 

We returned to the hotel, and in an hour or 
two I met Mr. Eastman in the office and he said, 
"I did that, and I seem to be all right now." 

The next night on returning from school, I 
saw some of the boys working on the con- 
trivances which I immediately recognized as 
the paraphernalia of the snipe-hunter. 

"Who are you going to take out now?" 
I asked. 

"Eastman," they answered in chorus. "We 
are going tonight." And they did go that 
night. 

The next morning, rising early and going 
down to the depot, I ran across Eastman, 
walking down the railroad track toward the 
depot, and just getting in (sad, footworn and 
disconsolate) from an all-night stay in the 
mountains where he had been "holding the 
sack". 

"They think they are pretty smart in this 
cowboy country, don't they?" he shot at me, 
as he hurried by. Going on to his hotel, he 
disappeared. 

Snipe-hunting does not appeal to me now 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 91 

as it once did, and I almost feel ashamed to 
find myself smiling at the recollections of some 
of these past pranks. Still, I am not entirely 
sure that any harm is done by them, and 
possibly an occasional hazing has its place, 
and may be of value in the discipline and educa- 
tion it gives us and in the early "wising-up" of 
the unsophisticated. 

I continued to make good in the optical 
business, financially and professionally. And 
as I was thoroughly competent and always 
did honest, thorough and faithful work, I be- 
came well known in the town and was always 
successful. Laboring under disadvantages, I 
made good. Now let me come back to the re- 
cital of some of my experiences, mishaps and 
escapades elsewhere. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Twenty Years Ago! 

— Old Poem. 

I don 't know whether any one hears of that 
old poem any more, or whether it is even pub- 
lished any more; but, precocious in my school 
work, I used to read it in school when I was 
eleven years old, and that was more than 
twenty years ago. I would like to print the 
old poem here. I think I still remember every 
word of it, but I have not seen it in print for 
years, and might get it wrong. So I will not 
try it, but will give the first verse. 

"I've wandered to the village, Tom, 

I've sat beneath the tree 

Upon the school house playground, 

That sheltered you and me. 

But none were left to greet me, Tom, 

And few were left to know 

Who played with us upon the green, 

Some Twenty Years Ago." 

When I was a little boy, and read that in 
92 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 93 

school, it always made a vivid impression upon 
my mind; and I had a strange conception of 
the enormous lapse of time comprehended in 
"twenty years." But, twenty years does not 
seem long now in looking back, although it still 
seems longer than it really is in looking ahead. 

It is twenty years, yes, more than twenty 
years since I got my first job as telegraph 
operator at White Cloud, Michigan. I was a 
new man, and of course was not a very good 
operator, as it was my first job. I was sent to 
work nights there on the old C. & W. M. Ry. 
The day operator was a splendid fellow, named 
Blue. The billing clerk was Mr. Gurley, a 
bright and genial fellow, now dead, while Mr. 
William Ross, since holding Blue's old job as 
day operator was then the station agent. 

It was quite a pretentious railroad station 
at that time, being the junction point where the 
two branches of the old Chicago and West Mich- 
igan railway crossed, one running from Grand 
Rapids to Traverse City and the other from 
Muskegon to Big Rapids. I was then young 
and entirely inexperienced, and so "green "that 



94 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

the yardmaster, Hopkins, called me "Rufus." 
Here I did not have all my own way 
playing jokes on other people; and not a few 
were perpetrated on me. I seemed to be liked 
by all the boys, including the conductors, the 
engineers and brakemen, who of course "laid 
over" in White Cloud, that being the point 
where many of the trains were made up. 
Blue and Gurley and Ross were all very nice to 
me and helped me in every way. 
1 And so the month wore away, and by con- 
stant effort I managed to hold my job. Get- 
ting my first month's check cashed I immedi- 
ately secured a long, flat pocketbook for bills, 
and began carrying it in my back trousers' pock- 
et. For several weeks I had been in the habit 
of taking a railroad velocipede that some em- 
ployee around the depot had, and for the exer- 
cise, novelty, and new sights, would pump down 
the track a mile or two and back. Sometimes 
I took the track towards Muskegon as far as 
Ryerson, and again, the other track, going 
a mile or two toward Traverse City or Grand 
Rapids, and back. 

After receiving my first month's pay, and 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 95 

making some expenditures in the way of clothes 
and a few other things, I only had a small 
amount of money left. Putting that in my 
long pocketbook and the pocketbook in my 
hip pocket, I pumped to Ryerson and back, 
and then ran down on the Grand Rapids line 
a short distance and came back. On going into 
the telegraph office I put my hand out for my 
pocketbook and found it gone. It had slipped 
out while pumping the velocipede. There was 
but one thing to do, and although tired 
out and virtually exhausted by the long trip, 
I immediately got on the velocipede and pumped 
to Ryerson again, watching, eagle-eyed, every 
foot of the way. Not rinding it, I came back 
to White Cloud, and was immediately starting 
out on the other track for a two mile pump 
toward Grand Rapids, when Blue came up, and 
handing me my pocketbook said, "Here is your 
pocketbook, Jim. You did not have it with 
you at all, but left it on the table here when you 
were showing it to Gurley and me." 

Was I indignant? Not a bit of it. We 
never become angry with those we like, do what 
they will, and Blue was a royal fellow, honest, 



96 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

honorable and capable, and the soul of good 
nature and friendliness. 

I got to be a pretty good operator after 
awhile; not good, but fair, and I understood the 
business well enough to hold my own with 
the common fellows; although there were 
a few fast ones who had me "up a tree" a good 
deal of the time, and often destroyed the seren- 
ity of my temper. And I, in turn, would be 
equally mean in harassing some other fellow, 
perhaps not hardly as good as myself. 

The "call" for White Cloud was "M-R"; 
and when the batteries and instruments were 
working right, these letters produced a tele- 
graphic sound that could be heard with un- 
common distinctness and at quite a distance. 

One evening I had occasion to leave the 
office and go out on the platform a moment, 
when Blue, who was in the office, slipped up and 
locked the door on me, and then, unseen, 
dropped under the table and manipulated the 
wires in such a manner as to call "M-R"! 
"M-R"! "M-R"! very rapidly, signing "H.", 
the train -dispatcher's call. Hearing my call 
distinctly from the platform I immediately 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 97 

turned to go in and answer it to find the door 
locked! The dispatcher's furious call for 
train orders continued for about five minutes, 
and I was on the point of breaking open the 
door when my friend Blue calmly opened it and 
said pleasantly, "They want you for train 
orders, Jim. They have been calling you for 
the last fifteen minutes." 

I was once sent to work, days, at Fruitport 
Junction, a little junction about three miles 
from Muskegon, Michigan, where the operator 
had to keep a gate swung across the tracks, 
first one track and then the other, blocking one 
track and leaving the other clear. I had to 
room and board in Muskegon, and pump-out 
mornings on a railroad velocipede, in time to 
let some train through at seven A. M., leaving 
again for Muskegon about five P. M. The 
salary was small, but the work was easy, the 
hours good, my boarding place agreeable, and 
Muskegon a delightful old town, at one 
time, sawing more lumber and mak- 
ing more shingles than any other town 
in the United States. It no longer does 
these things, but has developed in other 



98 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

ways into a prosperous Michigan city of the 
second (and I am not entirely sure but of the 
first) class. 

When I could get away from my duties of 
swinging the gate and getting an occasional 
train order, I used to take my railroad veloci- 
pede and do the same stunt I did at White 
Cloud, — ride down the railroad track and 
visit some of the old derelict towns, once 
prosperous, and the scenes of activity, but long 
since passed into the pathetic class of Gold- 
smith's "Deserted Village." 

One day in going back to my boarding 
house, I got drenched to the skin in a tremen- 
dous down -pour of rain. Although I imme- 
diately changed my clothes, early that evening 
I was seized with a severe and acute attack 
of sciatic rheumatism in the left hip joint, and 
so severe was it, that I could not even move 
my hip the fraction of an inch. The hotel man 
learned of the situation and brought my supper 
up to my room. I then said to him, "I've got 
to get over this and be fixed up some way, 
so I can pump out on the railroad velocipede 
to the telegraph office, and be there at seven 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 99 

o'clock in the morning, or the two trains will 
come together. I am the only operator here, 
and the only one that can do it. It don't 
make any difference whether I have sciatic 
rheumatism or what I have, I've got to get down 
there and look after those trains, and I must 
be fixed up right off. I can't go down to see 
a doctor, because I can't move my left hip- 
joint at all. I want you to send some physi- 
cian up here at once and have him come to 
my room." 

"I will go down and have Dr. Quinn come 
up," he replied. 

In about an hour I heard some wheezing 
man coming up on one leg. After a few mo- 
ments a cross red-faced Irishman opened the 
door and said, "What did you send for me for? 
I've got rheumatism myself and can't do any- 
thing for it. I have had it for twenty years. 
One leg is off and I have rheumatism in the 
other. This is a pretty thing to call me out 
and make me walk up those stairs!" 

"But" said I, as soon as I could check him, 
' ' I am the day operator down at Fruitport Junc- 
tion, and I have to get down there by seven 



100 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

o'clock in the morning to swing those gates, 
or the two trains will come together. There 
is absolutely no one else to do it. I have to 
pump down on a railroad velocipede, and to 
do that I have to use this other leg. I can't 
even move this hip joint. You've got to fix 
me up in some way so I can walk, and so I 
can pump that velocipede." 

"Well," he said, "you can get this pre- 
scription filled, but it might not help you any. 
It don't me. I hope you will be all right by 
morning, but if you are going to have 
rheumatism, get some place so a fellow 
won't have to climb these stairs! "And wheezing, 
he slowly, painfully and indignantly made 
his way down stairs to his office just across the 
street. 

The hotel man went out and got the pre- 
scription filled, and I rubbed the liniment on 
several times before retiring for the night. 
Whether because of the medication, or some 
other valid reason, the rheumatic symptoms 
had so moderated in the early morning (although 
they had not entirely disappeared) , that I was 
able to walk as far as the railroad track, get on 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 101 

my velocipede, and pump it down to Fruitport 
Junction which I reached in ample time to 
attend to my work. 

I once tried to operate a small grocery store 
in the little village of Fennville, which was 
my home town. But times were hard, a panic 
was on, people took little stock in me, because 
I was a home boy and everybody knew me, and 
lastly, because I had neither the natural ability 
nor the training for a commercial debut. Still 
I hung on for two years and lost a few hundred 
dollars, but learned a whole lot, had a splendid 
time, and lived through it. 

Several years before I opened the grocery- 
store in Fennville, a young fellow had struck 
that town and opened a jewelry store. He 
was a nice looking fellow, — bright, and, al- 
though young, a first-class jeweler, full of con- 
fidence, business ability and hustle. His name 
was John Raven, and he was born near the un- 
important little town of McDonald, Michigan, in 
rural surroundings. He had learned the 
jewelry business of his brother-in-law, L. P. 
Husen, then of Hartford, Michigan, who, 
staking him, had helped him to open the store 



102 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

in the little village of Fennville. A favorite 
immediately in society, the young jeweler 
wooed, and the next year, married the brightest 
and prettiest little girl in all that country 'round 
— the adopted daughter of the village editor. 

Fennville was a country town, and the people 
in the adjacent country made their living by 
farming and by raising fruit — peaches and 
apples — that being the center of the great 
Michigan fruit-belt. 

Just before I had opened this little grocery 
store, my later friend, Raven, had failed in the 
jewelry business, and, out of it entirely, was in 
a precarious financial shape. With his stock 
gone, and no money with which to purchase 
another, he moved his regulator into one corner 
of my grocery store; and, setting up his work 
bench, prepared to look adversity and fallen 
fortune squarely in the face and begin the battle 
anew. 

There was no money in the business outlook 
for either Raven or me! Standing it for per- 
haps six months longer, the times growing 
harder and the business less for each of us 
every minute, Raven suggested that I hire 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 103 

a horse and buggy, purchase a stock of 
spectacles, and he and I would go down the 
line selling glasses. Although not an opti- 
cian, he was at that time legally permitted to 
fit glasses. 

Raven was an expert salesman, a fluent 
talker, was possessed of an ultra -magnetic 
personality, and could sell any kind of a 
proposition, when an ordinary salesman would 
have starved to death. Without stopping once, 
we drove as far as Glenn, a little "four corners" 
some eight or ten miles west and south of Fenn- 
ville. There Raven's ability in salesmanship 
enabled him to fit a prominent man, George T. 
Clapp, with a pair of glasses. Stopping first 
at one house and then another, Raven soon 
found, on counting his money, that he had just 
twenty-seven dollars, although we had started 
out without a cent. 

Passing on into the township of Casco, I 
was sitting out in the buggy after dinner, 
holding the horse, when a red-eyed, grouchy 
individual drove up, stopped, and gave me 
thus an opportunity to tell him who we were, 
and that Mr. Raven, an expert optician, was 



104 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

driving through that country fitting glasses. 

"How are your eyes?" I continued, " Do you 
see pretty well?" 

' ' Some people see too well ! " he replied . "Go 
on, Mag!" 

We stopped at one place where all of my 
friend's eloquence and persuasiveness were 
needed to make a sale. He had examined the 
woman's eyes. The optometer indicated a 
very high degree of hypermetropia, and the 
applied glasses did not seem to fully correct 
the extreme difficulty. But it was the best 
correction he could possibly make, and per- 
sonally I was confident that in a day or two 
the eyes would adjust themselves to the glasses, 
and I so advised Raven. And yet, they did 
not immediately seem to fit. 

"Can you see any better, Ma?" asked the 
old man. 

"Of course she can see better," said Raven, 
without giving her an opportunity to reply. 

"Hold me, pa!" said the woman, not being 
able to see distinctly. 

My judgment proved correct in the diag- 
nosis, for I drove down to see the woman a 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 105 

month later, and found her still wearing the 
same pair of glasses with perfect satisfaction 
and pleasure. 

A few months later I disposed of my grocery 
stock and engaged regularly in the optical 
business, while Mr. Raven, getting out of the 
jewelry business for good, began his successful 
career as a jewelry auctioneer, selling jewelry 
stocks for accredited jewelers in every part of 
the United States, and with conspicuous success. 
He would usually hold his sale for one week, 
and I would often arrange to make the same 
town the sane week, fitting glasses in the store 
whose stock was being sold. In this way I was 
able to doubly and effectively advertise my 
business, and usually with a high degree of 
success. 



CHAPTER IX. 



The Roach House! 



Once Mr. Raven was dated to sell a jewelry 
stock for Mr. H. E. Low at Buchanan, Michigan, 
and I arranged to make the town at the same 
time, and fitting glasses in the same store. 

We stopped at the best, in fact, the only 
hotel in town and occupied the same room. 
While we had both stopped before, at alleged 
hotels which could with propriety be technically 
referred to as "fierce", this was a little the worst 
we had ever run across since we were boys 
together in the far-away days. 

Raven's jewelry sale was good, while I was 
making some money in the optical business, but 
these successes were more than lost sight of in 
the frightful accommodations of the hotel. The 
place was literally overrun with cock roaches — 
no insignificant insects — but big, broad -browed 
long-legged, juicy ones! And they were every- 
where and in everything! They were in every 



106 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 107 

thing we ate, and there were so many on and 
around the bed that there was no opportunity 
to even sit on the bed, much less lie on it. 
When we woke up in the morning, we 
would find half a dozen athletic roaches running 
up and down the legs of the bed as if daring us 
to get up. And the flies were just as numerous 
as the roaches. They too, were cooked in 
everything, and one was not able to take 
a long breath without danger of serious con- 
sequences. 

Raven and I always took our meals at the 
same time, occupying the same table close 
together. One morning we had some nice- 
looking, hot biscuits for breakfast. Made 
ravenous by my light diet for nearly a week (I 
could not eat for roaches), I eyed the biscuits 
with increasing hunger, and said, "At last here 
is one that's safe!" and took a huge bite. 
Fatal mistake! I bit a big, fat cock-roach 
"right in two in the middle!" Raven was just 
that moment coming into the dining hall and 
seating himself at the table. Without a word, 
I took this biscuit, where the roach had "fought, 
bled, and died," put it near Raven's plate, and 



108 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

quietly left the room, going out and seating 
myself in the office. One glance at the biscuit 
and the defunct roach, and Raven followed 
immediately. 

By this time we were both getting so weak 
for want of food, that we decided to ask Mrs. 
Low to let us go down to dinner with them and 
get something to eat. She graciously assured us 
they would be glad to have us come. 

That noon we gorged ourselves on well 
cooked spring chicken, mashed potatoes, hot 
biscuits (but without roaches) baked squash, rice 
pudding and pumpkin pie. This was twenty 
years ago nearly, and while neither of us has 
ever been there since, to know if the same man 
has charge of this hotel, the memory of it "that 
will not down" remains with us to this day! 
And we have ever since referred to it as "The 
Roach House." 

Leaving Buchanan at the close of our busi- 
ness Saturday evening, we were driven to a 
little way-station on the Pere Marquette railroad, 
where we wished to catch a train north for 
Holland, and — home.. But there was no 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 109 

night operator at the place, and the fast train 
did not stop there. 

So, having been an old operator on the road, 
and knowing the time of the different trains 
and the proper method of procedure in such a 
case, the moment the fast train's head-light 
appeared, I lighted a newspaper, and waving 
it on the track, brought the train to a stop, when 
Raven and I got on. This action was irregular, 
but essential and effective, and Conductor 
Johnson was half sore when he came down the 
aisle to collect our fare, but broke into a laugh 
when he saw who it was. 

Johnson was a fleshy man and one of the 
most popular conductors on the road. The 
picture of health, he nevertheless was long a 
sufferer from heart trouble of a serious nature, 
and less than a year thereafter he went the way 
of all flesh, being fatally striken while passing 
w T ith his train through the Waverly yards. 

Reaching our respective homes all right, I 
got off at Fennville, while Mr. Raven went 
through to Holland. 

We next went to Reed City, Michigan. Mr. 
Raven was an unusually bright fellow and was 



110 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

conspicuously successful in business, making 
good financially when he once more "got on his 
financial feet" and could have the whole say 
about his business affairs. But, for a while, he 
received occasional assistance from his brother- 
in-law, L- P. Husen, the latter having the power 
to dictate to him what to do. It was then that 
Mr. Raven would say, "I don't know about it, 
Husen 's my other leg." 



CHAPTER X. 

Every heart has its mountain peak where 
envy, hatred and despair tears life long with 
vulture beak. 

— Prometheus. 

Prometheus, chained eternally to the rock 
with the vulture feeding forever on his vitals 
which grow again, but symbolizes what some 
of the less wise or less fortunate men and women 
must endure through life, until the final 
summons comes and the captive is unchained! 

Not every heart that seems happy is over- 
filled with joy, while he whose mistaken life 
could well excite pity, bears his chains uncom- 
plainingly. Few are free, and well has the 
poet said, "Every heart has its mountain peak 
where envy, hatred and despair tears life long 
with vulture beak." 

It would be ill-advised for the writer who is 
attempting to see only the humorous side of 
things, to refer at length to the mistakes, 
follies, temptations and failures of a life, or 

111 



112 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

perhaps even to speak of them at all. But, 
what to the unthinking would seem success, 
the captive bound to the everlasting rock sees 
in quite a different light, and often interprets 
in terms of regret and failure. 

The writer, who perhaps has had a better 
chance than anyone else in the world for an ultra- 
successful career, did not make the best use of 
his manifold opportunities; and, in order to 
escape, or at least neutralize, the chagrin that 
comes in later life, has trained himself to see 
the humorous side of his follies, accidents and 
mistakes, and look upon the whole thing as a 
huge joke! 

1 i But it is a beautiful thought to know that 
Prometheus will some day be unbound, and 
that the gates of opportunity never close, but 
remain wide open, world without end! 



CHAPTER XI 

A Kindly Word for the Old School. 

As time goes on, and I grow older, I am 
beginning to more clearly understand the 
reasons for the marvelously successful career 
of the great Valparaiso University and school 
where I had the honor to graduate in 1897. 
While I thought differently when a boy, now 
that I am almost a middle aged man, I can see 
with clearer vision that real merit in some un- 
usual degree must be the true explanation for 
such stupendous success. Every student who 
goes there succeeds later in life, and if by chance 
the occasional and rare one fails, his failure 
can be found in himself alone. 

It is absolutely the only school in the 
entire country where the poor boy or girl can 
receive a thorough education, and where the 
student of moderate means can successfully com- 
pete with the student whose family is wealthy. 
It is absolutely the only school where the 
student is known by his work and not by 



113 



114 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

the amount of money the father gives the child 
to spend. Living expenses are made so low 
that the poorest hoy or girl can pay them, and 
the wealthy student can find accommodations 
to his liking without usurous expenditure. 
Students come from every state in the union, 
and come year after year, and are found 
representing almost every civilized country on 
the globe. Twenty- two foreign countries are 
represented, including Syria, India, Japan and 
the Philippine Islands. Nearly six thousand 
students attend every year and nearly two 
hundred of the best teachers that can possibly 
be found any place in the United States act 
as their efficient instructors. 

The fact that the school has no endowment 
whatever but is an entirely private institution, 
and that it continues its large attendance every 
year with no falling off but rather with constant 
increase, and with every graduate successful, 
is evidence to the writer that the school is do- 
ing tremendously satisfactory work. 

Without solicitation, and without the pres- 
ident knowing it, — having here the oppor- 
tunity — the writer wishes to make this state- 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 115 

ment: — This is the only University in the 
United States where an humble, uninfluential 
student can approach the president, H. B. 
Brown, or the vice-president, O. P. Kinsey, 
at any time, and be treated pleasantly, court- 
eously and as an equal. This treatment and 
kindly feeling is in itself worth more than the 
vear's tuition! 



CHAPTER XII. 

Some acquaintance with the Mormons of 
Utah and the West! 

After finishing the scientific course at the 
Valparaiso University in 1897, I engaged to 
teach the little school at Clifton, Oneida County, 
Idaho. I began work there that fall, remain- 
ing three years. 

While they have since erected a very large, 
fine school house, and have an efficient corps 
of teachers, at that time there was but one 
teacher, school was held in a rude little log 
cabin of one room having less than half the 
necessary space, the seats were wretched, the 
blackboards insufficient, and we were without 
enough books by sixty or seventy pupils. 

It was unusually hard to know just exactly 
what to do or how to get along. Had it not 
been for the fact that the boys and girls were the 
nicest children in the world I would have been 
in despair about getting along at all. But they 
were bright, genial, nice-mannered and help- 



116 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 117 

ful, and did everything in their power to make 
it as pleasant and agreeable for me as possible, 
instead of doing quite the contrary thing as the 
occasional American boy or girl seems to do. 

I boarded and roomed with a pleasant, 
mild-mannered old lady whom everybody loved, 
and whom I in time learned to know well, as 
"Aunt Harriet, " by which name she was known 
all through that country. She lived with her 
grown-up son, a young man twenty-five years 
of age, in a small house of tw T o rooms, with a 
lean -to or ' ' shanty ' ' w T hich was used as a kitchen . 

My first school surprise came when, after 
asking for some kind of fuel so we could have 
a fire, to have two big logs about a foot 
in diameter drawn up, be handed an ax, 
and told that either one of the boys or myself 
would be expected to consider these two logs 
as "wood". And I had been reared in Mich- 
igan where we had a wood-shed, and every 
winter twenty cords of stove wood were sawed, 
split up and piled in tiers and protected from 
the snow and rain in this wood shed. 

There is an old and very foolish saying ' 'when 
in Rome you must do as the Romans do." 



118 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

There is absolutely nothing to it. That old 
saying is both silly and untrue. I immediately 
told the folks that I belonged to a different school 
of artisans, and would have to have some wood 
cut, piled up and put inside, out of the snow and 
rain. And without a protest or an unpleasant 
word, in civilized manner the thing was done. 
The trustees, the parents, and the boys and 
girls helped in every possible way they could. 

I learned by the merest chance at the end 
of the first week that these people were Mor- 
mons, or as they called themselves " Latter Day 
Saints." It never had occurred to me that I 
was in a Mormon settlement or that there were 
any Mormons in that country. I thought they 
were all down in Utah, and could be distin- 
guished by some peculiar appearance. I soon 
began to think a great deal of "Aunt Harriet" 
and of her grown-up son, Warren, with whom 
I roomed. One day I said to her, "I don't 
suppose you ever meet any Mormons?", when 
she replied, "We are all Mormons in this 
neighborhood but two families . I am a Mormon . ' ' 

After working for a month or two, and with 
winter on and snow a foot or eighteen inches 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 119 

deep, I drove with the County School Superin- 
tendent to a little town called Mink Creek, for 
the purpose of giving a talk on educational 
matters. 

Mink Creek is a little hamlet away off in the 
mountains some place, to reach which you 
would have to drive for miles along the bank of 
the Bear River, with the river on the left hand 
going in, and the rugged mountains on the right. 
Going over this for the first time it seems they 
were making some repairs on the Canyon road, 
and occassionally, rocks, stones and boulders 
would roll down the mountain side often passing 
just in front of us, or behind, as we were driving 
through. 

"I am new here and I don't know «f they 
are trying to knock us off into Bear River or 
not," said the superintendent. 

' ' Nor do I , either, ' ' I replied , ' ' and about the 
only thing that need concern us is that we get 
to Mink Creek in safety tonight for the meeting. " 

After the lecture I had my first experience 
attending a dance given under Mormon aus- 
pices, and learned for the first time that these 
people advocate, instead of opposing, dancing as 



120 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

a social amusement. I remember well the 
Mormons' Articles of Faith, but will not 
take the space to subjoin them here. 
One strong point in their social life and belief 
is sobriety, frugality, and early marriage. 
As I was working among them I took early 
pains to learn much about their beliefs, cus- 
toms and practices. Full of short comings 
myself, I am, as I grow older, more tolerant in 
adverse criticism of any one else. I found I 
could not criticise them adversely and do it 
with much justice. 

The next morning I returned to my school 
at Clifton, and soon became a regular partici- 
pant in all of the village dances, my enjoyment 
in the pastime leading me often to attend 
dances in neighboring villages and school houses. 
This don't mean that I am arguing in favor of 
public dancing, for in the way I have just men- 
tioned, it was more like a private, social, fam- 
ily affair. 

In driving over the country "out west" a 
good deal, I first saw and learned of the 
western small wolf — the coyote. They are 
tricky, cunning, cowardly and enduring and the 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 121 

country is infested with them. They live on 
rabbits, and under favorable conditions, on the 
ranchers' chickens. Few dogs have the hardi- 
hood to attack them, although the make-believe 
dog will follow them until the coyote turns, 
when the dog himself will run away. 

Aunt Harriet's son, Warren, had a dog that 
really deserved the name of " Bluffer" although 
his name was Sport. For months I thought 
Sport was " the real thing" and just the essence 
of pugnacity, only to learn later that he was all 
"yellow." 

The first time I saw Sport do his stunt I was 
riding out one evening with Warren going in 
a sleigh from Clifton to Oxford, a small place 
four or five miles away, Sport following behind. 
Seeing a coyote coming down the road behind, 
Sport gave a menacing growl and with eyes 
distended and hair on end started down the 
road after him. He looked so fierce that my 
sympathy went out wholly to the wolf and I 
begged Warren to call in his dog, as I did not 
want to see any blood shed. 

"You needn't worry," said Warren. "He 
won't hurt him." And he didn't! 



122 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

When within about a dozen rods of the wolf, 
the coyote just laid his head over his shoulder 
and gave one silent, instantaneous look, and 
Sport just dislocated his spinal column getting 
back to the sleigh, and even tried to run under 
it. 

This was invariably repeated every time I 
went out with Warren and his dog. I never 
saw any four-legged animal that could make 
the time Sport would in getting back to the 
sleigh. The coyote had only to put his head 
over his shoulder and look at him — once. 
Not a bark was made nor a growl uttered — 
just one look ! 

I never saw anything quite so funny in my 
life. "Brave dog! That of yours, Warren," 
I said. 

"I am just like that," he said, "it runs in 
our family." 



CHAPTER XIII 

My Changed Religious Convictions. 

There has crept upon me almost impercept- 
ibly in the last half dozen or dozen years a 
radical, and I believe, a distinct change in my 
former religious ideas. I have not the skill to 
set down or think exactly what I feel, but the 
thoughts seem to be there. I am not ' 'convert- 
ed", am not a particle religious in the church 
sense, and would no doubt be considered as un- 
orthodox as I ever was. And yet, I look upon 
so-called religious matters in an entirely differ- 
ent light than I did years ago. Ever since I 
received my first impetus in the way of looking 
at things from the agnostic's point of view, I 
have no longer been an agnostic. 

After the death of Roscoe Conklin, Robert 
G. Ingersoll delivered his matchless eulogy 
upon the life and character of that eminent 
statesman. I believe it was delivered before 
the legislature of New York. Of course it was 
widely spread by the associated press, and 



123 



124 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

appeared not only in every prominent news- 
paper in the United States, but on the " patent 
side" of every rural newspaper in the country. 

Our local country newspaper published the 
address and with it a picture of the eminent 
speaker, placing under it simply the two 
words, "The Orator." I read it carefully 
and with such tremendous interest, that I 
committed nearly all of the eulogy to mem- 
ory. The phraseology was so different from 
anything I had ever heard or read before, 
and so transcendently beautiful, I was cap- 
tivated on the spot, and for life. 

Judge for yourself whether the following 
ultra-eloquent language would not make an 
impression on anyone competent to recognize a 
beautiful thing, and doubly so upon a young 
and impressionable boy, qualified mentally 
to understand such eloquent words and hear- 
ing them for the first time. I subjoin the clos- 
ing words: 

"And as he lived he died! Proudly he 
entered the darkness or the dawn that we call 
Death. Unflinching, he passed beyond our 
horizon, beyond the twilight's purple hills, 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 125 

beyond the utmost limit of human harm or 
help, — to that vast realm of silence or of joy 
where the innumerable dwell. And he has left 
with us his wealth of thought and deed, the 
memory of a brave, imperious, honest man 
who bowed alone to Death." < 

Afterwards I read every book this eminent 
author wrote, both of an anti-religious and of a 
political nature; heard a number of his superb 
addresses, and was in entire bondage to his ideas 
and eloquence. In recent years however I have 
"broken clear", and see so-called religious 
matters in quite a different light. 

Christ has no followers. He never had, and 
probably never will have any followers. His 
teachings are so beautiful, and so far above 
anything that is human, that thus far any at- 
tempts to follow them, even remotely, have re- 
sulted in the grossest kind of failure. I am 
sometimes egotistical enough to think that I 
would be able to follow them almost as well 
as anyone yet has done. Certainly I could do 
little worse! 

If they were or could be followed, my own 
judgment is that all the essentials of the Christ- 



126 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

ian religion could be written on the back of a 
postal card. "Do unto others as you would 
have them do unto you." But churches are 
built of cold brick and stone and the remote 
memory of Christ's beautiful, tragic and un- 
selfish life is commerce and pretense — money! 
money! money! How far am I wrong? 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Some Erratic Reminiscences of Here and 
There. Sheep-herding. 

When I was in the optical business in 
Valparaiso, Indiana with offices in the front 
rooms over Urban s' store on College Avenue, 
and using the title ''Doctor," as doctor of 
ophthalmology, many people thought I was an 
M. D., although I am not. 

In the adjoining room, two boys from Idaho, 
Morris Cottom and his friend, Mr. Dunlap, 
roomed together. Cottom had a bad cold, and 
having called me in, I told him he had the 
mumps and insisted that he go to bed. 

Cottom was an unusually bright fellow and 
felt that we were trying to haze him a little, 
yet while he objected strenuously he neverthe- 
less ultimately complied. To carry the joke 
further, his room mate would allow callers 
to come in to see him only a few minutes 
at a time — as he did not want him dis- 
turbed because he had the n:umps! 



127 



128 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

Once out in Beaver City, Utah, near the 
central part of the state, while waiting for a 
little school to open in the fall, without 
money and having nothing to do, I hustled 
around, and through the influence of my 
friend, Prof. J. E- Hickman, obtained a job 
herding sheep for a sheep man, one Mr. Gillis. 

It was my first experience along that line, 
and I did not last long — only a week — when 
I resigned. Still, I liked the work, had a most 
enjoyable time, and would have continued in- 
definitely had the following incident not oc- 
curred. The young man who was with me 
went to town one day promising to be back for 
supper, but instead, got drunk, and did not 
come back until the next morning — when I 
resigned — refusing to work with a man who 
would not keep his word. 

I did not know at that time that sheep 
herders as a class are not reliable, cannot as 
a rule be depended upon, and usually, although 
not always, are inclined to drink. 

This boy, John Gillis, was a young man 
about twenty-five years of age, and was him- 
self half owner of his father's herd which we 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 129 

were watching. John, although a young man, 
was a good deal of a booze fighter, and I 
learned afterwards could hardly go to town 
without drinking, thus becoming more or less 
irresponsible. Had I known this I might have 
been a little more charitable, but I only knew 
that he did not keep his word — did not get 
back when he said he would — and I quit. 

Yet apart from his fault of occasional 
drinking, John was bright, and the most genial 
and best fellow in the world. I never had a 
better time in my life than I did the very short 
time I was out with him about a dozen miles 
south of the little village of Beaver City on the 
sage-brush desert of middle Utah. 

Our sheep camp was our sheep wagon in which 
we rested days and slept nights, and in which 
we did our cooking. John baked his own sour- 
dough bread, while the best I, a green horn, 
could do, was to get a few pails of water and 
occasionally round up the sheep which had 
strayed too far away. 

To be doing something, John had in the 
wagon a little .22 caliber rifle which he would 
take with him when we walked out to look after 



130 some; humorous experiences 

the sheep. He used it to practice shooting 
at the peg squirrels, which, sitting upright on 
their haunches at the door of their ground home, 
were ready to drop into it and disappear the 
moment any one approached. John must have 
kept himself "broke" all the time buying 
cartridges to shoot at these peg squirrels, and 
during the week I was with him I never knew 
him to hit one. We would hear the little 
bullet go "ping", and see it disappear in a little 
cloud of dust as it struck the ground a hundred 
yards beyond. 

But John never even dreamed of being dis- 
couraged, and every time he went out he was 
just as zealous to take his gun along as if he 
had been meeting with conspicuous success 
right along in slaying peg squirrels. The 
humor of the thing got on my nerves and into 
my brain after a while, and I took the liberty 
of jollying John about his marksmanship one 
day. He remained silent and good natured but 
it seemed to set him thinking, because the next 
morning when we started out he without his fire- 
arm, I said, "John, aren't you going to take your 
gun?" He replied, with a downcast look, "No.'' 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 131 

The novelty of herding sheep for the first 
time is of some interest, but, requires hard 
work when one is not experienced. 

A few of the lesser troubles are, — keeping 
the bunch from wandering too far away, thus 
losing some of them; and, letting others get in 
some ditch or gulley filled with water, or 
stray so far away that the stragglers might 
be set upon by coyotes. They tell a good many 
humorous stories about a new sheep herder 
who was a good man, but the owner could not 
keep him in sheep — he would lose the bunch . 

About half a mile from where John and I 
had our sheep wagon was a wide, deep gully 
or ravine half filled with water, and I was early 
given to understand that we must keep the sheep 
away from there or we would lose them. They 
would get into the water, or still worse, would 
get across on the other side, stray away and 
become a prey to the coyotes or be hope- 
lessly lost. 

Before John left and while he was herding 
with me, every sheep seemed to be on his good 
behavior, and we never had to pay any atten- 
tion to them. We could sit in our sheep wagon, 



132 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

read some paper or a book, and gossiping with 
each other tell what improvement we could 
make in the sheep industry if we "only owned 
the sheep . ' ' But after John left all this changed 
and it almost immediately seemed that every 
individual sheep in the flock wanted to start off 
on an exploring expedition, and each in a dif- 
ferent direction. 

Now there is a law in natural philosophy 
that a body cannot occupy two places at the 
same time and I verified that law when I tried 
to look after three thousand sheep, every one 
of which was moving in a different direction and 
all at the same time. John had told me I would 
have no trouble, as the dog would look after 
them; but the dog had laid down in the shade 
of the sheep wagon and gone to sleep. I did the 
best I could, the only thing I knew to do. I 
started out to keep the sheep from falling into 
the big ditch, or worse still, from crossing the 
ditch at some unlooked-for place and being 
lost on the other side. 

But too late! The next time I looked up 
I saw at least fifteen -hundred sheep already on 
the other side, half of them feeding on or near 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 133 

the summit of another mountain range. It 
seemed to me that the thing to do was to go 
after them and try to drive them back across 
the ditch, and over where they belonged near 
our sheep camp. 

But how to get across the ditch myself, — 
that was the question. I tried it and wandered 
up and down the bank for three-quarters of 
a mile without finding a place where anything 
but a bird or a fish could cross, for the ditch 
was full of water. 

At the same time the sheep on the side I was 
on needed some attention. My dog having 
been quiescent right along, now showed signs 
of unusual activity. Looking up, I saw the 
other half of the flock, which had remained on 
the home side, on a dead run for the nearby 
foot hills with my brave dog in close pursuit. 
I never knew whether the dog was chasing them 
or was just taking exercise, or whether again he 
lost his nerve by hearing the bark of a nearby 
coyote in close proximity to the bunch. But 
at any rate the dog and this section of my 
sheep bolted. 

Now it requires no unusual generalship on 



134 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

the part of a soldier in the field when his army, 
powerful and well disciplined, is uniformly suc- 
cessful and the enemy is always "on the run." 
But, reverse the matter for a while. Be the 
weaker and under dog, the pursued and not the 
pursuer, the vanquished and not the victor, 
the one who is losing and not the one who is 
winning, the one who does not understand, as 
against the one who knows, and the aspect 
presents quite a different appearance. 

And so I found myself in a predicament 
which I did not have quite the skill or knowledge 
to meet. My flock of sheep was "split right in 
two in the middle," about fifteen hundred 
of them being on one side of a deep ravine filled 
with water, and about fifteen hundred on the 
other side, in a new and strange section, with 
night coming on, coyotes beginning to howl, 
my sheep dog in the sulks, my sheep camp lost in 
the quickly gathering darkness, the sheep scat- 
tered and in danger from wolves, John not back, 
and the sheep in charge of a hopeless tenderfoot, 
and without a mouthful to eat for either 
the dog or himself. 

John and I had all along slept in the wagon, 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 135 

first driving up the sheep and letting them lie 
for the right on the hillside near the camp 
as a protection against wolves. New in the 
business and not gauging my time correctly, 
night settled down and I suddenly found my- 
self in almost utter darkness, scarcely able to 
see the dog six feet away, and unable in the 
darkness to return to the camp. 

Losing the location of my sheep camp was 
accounted for the next day by this explanation : 
During the two hours the dog and I were busy 
trying to get the sheep back, John's brother 
had come down and changed the location of 
the sheep camp, taking the wagon to another 
place nearly a mile away. In the darkness 
I barely discovered the old location, only to find 
by feeling about that the wagon was gone. 

I had not the slightest idea what had become 
of it, and so without an opportunity to sleep 
that night and without supper or a drink of 
water I wandered around in the dark all night, 
with the sheep dog as company, keeping near 
the sheep and preventing the coyotes which 
could be heard yelping close on every side from 
at least killing any of the sheep. 



136 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

The night slowly dragged its weary length 
away, and as dawn began to break and I could 
once more discern objects, I noted that the sheep 
camp had been moved and was nearer the foot 
hills, in quite a different location. I then 
saw the reason why I could not locate it when 
darkness came on so suddenly the night before. 

An hour or two later John 's younger brother, 
a boy about fourteen years of age, rode out 
to the sheep camp from his father's home in 
Beaver to tell me that my fellow sheep-herder, 
John, had been drinking the night before and 
would not be back to the camp until later in the 
day. 

Refusing positively to associate with a man 
who would lie to me or in whom I could place 
no confidence, I told the boy we would round up 
the sheep on the hillside where there would be 
the least danger from any prowling coyotes, 
or of their getting into the ditch. Then I said I 
would go back home with him, and his father 
could hurry out another man to look after the 
sheep before they had time to stray away. 

Mr. Gillis handed me a check for ten dollars 
for the week I was out with the sheep and that 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 137 

was my first, last and only experience as a sheep 
herder. 

I was told later that sheep-herders as a class 
are not reliable; that they cannot be depended 
upon; that as a rule they drink, and that as a 
class they are not the kind of society a man 
would seek who insists upon associating with 
those only whose word can be taken at all times 
and in any place. 

I did not know at this time that poor John 
was a booze fighter. Had I known it, I might 
have acted differently, certainly I would have 
felt differently. 

It is the exceptional man who can ever hope 
to win in a prolonged contest with John Barley- 
corn! It would be exactly the same thing to 
have a two-year-old child put on the gloves with 
Jack Johnson, and expect the former to be 
victorious! 

And I might say here in passing that the 
great question before the American people to- 
day, as indeed it is all over the civilized world, 
is not the tariff question, patronage, militar- 
ism, woman suffrage or finance, but, how can 
the sale or even the manufacture of liquor be 



138 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

prevented — for an age of experience has proven 
it cannot be controlled. 

My business always kept me straight, but 
had I been engaged in some more reckless or un- 
orthodox work other than teaching school, I 
could as easily have gone the unhappy way of 
some of my brightest and best friends who lost 
in the unequal contest with King Alcohol. 

John was the best fellow in the world, bright, 
competent, genial, good-natured, educated and 
business-like, but he could not win where so 
many thousands had failed. But he drank 
and was therefore unreliable, and so in self- 
defense I was forced to quit him, as the drinking 
man must always in the end be quit. I have 
not seen him for a number of years, but he 
has my good wishes and I hope he has long 
ago given up the habit. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Some Erratic Experiences — Continued. 
Social Experience in Chicago. 

In my social days when I was younger 
I once had a girl in Chicago. She lived with her 
parents in one of the little villages or towns that 
are found every few blocks along the Illinois 
Central Suburban Railroad. I will not tell 
the name of the station, the name of the girl, or 
that of her parents. This was nearly a quarter 
of a century ago. She has long been married 
and living with her delightful family in a far 
away western state, and the memory, coming 
as an unforgotten happy dream is too sacred 
for others to share. 

At this time I was drumming for fruit for 
the well -known commission house of Barnett 
Bros, of 159 South Water Street, Chicago. My 
work was in the great fruit belt of Michigan with 
headquarters at Fennville, Michigan. Every 
few weeks I would cross Lake Michigan from 
Holland, Saugatuck or St. Joe and going out to 

139 



140 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

this Chicago Suburban Station, spend a day or 
two in the family of the girl I do not entirely 
forget. 

It would be foreign to the purpose of this 
little volume to tell of those golden days forever 
gone, of those happy hours that will not come 
again, of the theaters, the whispered hopes, 
nor yet of the great World's Fair of 1893. And 
all the time I did not know I was in love, nor 
did I suspect it until the occasion had forever 
passed. Prosperous in those days, with a small 
property, always a good position and soire 
money in the bank, I never felt the need of a 
dollar, nor did I know what it was to be without 
one. 

Without in the least suspecting it , I was so 
hopelessly gone on this girl, that once headed for 
Chicago, nothing that got in my way was ever 
considered and I seldom stopped to think where 
I was going or what I was doing. 

Arriving at Chicago one day and taking the 
street car I reached the suburban Illinois Cen- 
tral Station early in the evening. Something 
had momentarily gone wrong with the electric 
lights and it was getting quite dark. 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER l4l 

The street I had to go clown was torn up 
completely for some kind of repair work, and ow- 
ing to a two hours' downpour of drenching rain, 
was full of mud of the worst kind. I have never 
been able since to figure out just what kind of 
mud hole I got into that night, but I could not 
find the sidewalk and being just able to 
discern the outline of the street, I struck 
down the middle of it. The mud came up to 
my knees and over them. It was too late to 
go back — I had already come too far, besides I 
wanted to reach my destination. Sidewalks on 
either side of the street had long ago disap- 
peared in total darkness. There was but one 
thing to do — go on. And I went on, arriving 
at my friend's house covered with mud up to my 
knees, and I had to get Mr. H. to let me have a 
pair of his trousers for an immediate change. 

A hundred times since then I have made a 
special trip out to that town to try to find the 
street where I went in that night but I was 
always unsuccessful. 

The second day I returned to my work in 
the Fruit Belt, ready and eager to take up the 
"battle of life" again. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The Hermitage — The residence of Andrew 
Jackson. 

Once when driving with Freddy through 
Nashville, Tennessee, I went out to visit the old 
home of Andrew Jackson — The Hermitage. 
It is located some six or seven miles due east of 
Nashville close to the main roadside. At that 
time, twenty-one years ago, it was taken care of 
by some religious society who charged you 
twenty-five cents to be shown through the 
house and over the grounds. 

The hermitage looks exactly like the pictures 
we have seen of the house. Substantially built 
and pretty well out toward the road-side, with a 
neat barn in the rear, the place takes on much 
of the strenuosity that characterized the great 
statesman, warrior and fighter, Old Hickory. 
An oil-painting of Jackson hangs on the wall, be- 
ing from the same print from which his pictures 
are made the country over. The old darkey, who 
told me he was ninety years of age, and who 

142 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 143 

was Andrew Jackson's private coachman, 
showed me through the house and over the 
grounds. 

Andrew Jackson is buried in the back part of 
the yard of his old home, as are also his wife and 
two or three of their children, — I forget 
which. Old Hickory owned quite a few 
hundred acres of ground- where the hermitage 
is situated. It is good land and was always 
very valuable, but doubly so now. 

Jackson was a slave holder, and while I do 
not know whether there is any warrant for the 
story, his old negro coachman told me this: 
"Every time Jackson would buy a new slave 
one of his old slaves would die, and so he al- 
ways had the same number of slaves. He 
never could increase the number." 



CHAPTER XVII. 

A Joke on the Joker. 

When I had my optical offices on College 
Avenue over the store in J. D. Urbans' building, 
I had quite a wide circle of acquaintances and 
friends who made my place their headquarters, 
and called often to see me in a social, friendly 
way. 

Being a member of the K. of P. Lodge, I 
became very intimate with a prominent mem- 
ber of the order, Bro. W. L. Wright, a well- 
known attorney down town who often called 
to see me during his occasional spare moments. 
His companionship was trebly interesting and 
appreciated because of his genial disposition, 
bright intellect, his fund of humor and in- 
teresting conversation. Brother Wright had 
peculiar and unusual ability as a reader and 
public speaker. It was always a rich treat to 
have him drop in, whenever he could spare a 
moment's time. 

Attorney Wright left Valparaiso and went to 



144 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 145 

the Philippine Islands at the time of our war 
with Spain, and since that time has been prac- 
ticing law with conspicuous success in Manila. 
He accumulated a very considerable property, 
and has long been well-to-do, and is the same, 
bright, genial, social, professional man he always 
was. 

J. M. Shilling, a fellow student, was also a 
friendly, frequent visitor at my office rooms. 
My hall door was never locked and likewise the 
door that connected my sleeping apartment 
with the office was always wide open. 

One morning I awoke to find a piece of gas- 
pipe about a foot in length filled with giant 
powder and slugs, on the threshold of the door- 
way between my office and bed chamber and in 
close proximity to my bed. A fuse attached 
had been lighted and had burned as far as the 
percussion cap, which, exploding, would have 
set off the contrivance. 

While still trying to figure out the 
mechanism of the apparently "infernal 
machine" Mr. Shilling happened in, and 
taking note of the contrivance at once pro- 
nounced it a cleverly constructed "infernal 



146 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

machine." He claimed to be pretty well ac- 
quainted with such things by having consider- 
able official experience in different cities. 
"Yes, it's an infernal machine all right and if 
it had not been for the fact that the fuse went 
out before the cap exploded, you would have 
been a dead man and this building would have 
been a wreck," he said. 

As we were talking a young man, Mr. John 
Brtme, came in and telling me he was doing a 
little amateur detective work volunteered to 
make a police investigation gratis, and endeavor 
to apprehend the perpetrators. Declining his 
offered services and thanking all the boys for 
their interest in the matter which I told them 
was purely a joke of some kind, I started down 
stairs, only to be met when half way down by 
the Local Associated Press Reporter who 
turned me back and insisted that I give him the 
full facts in the matter so that he could make 
the proper report. I did so, at the time same 
assuring him it was only a joke of some kind, 
perpetrated by whom I did not know and could 
not even conjecture. 

The next day the Associated Press spread all 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 147 

over the country the most florid, wild-eyed and 
sensational story that I had seen in a paper 
since the Hamilton, Ohio incident. It was 
copied m my home village paper and in many 
other papers where I was well-known in addi- 
tion to all the big City Dailies. 

I immediately began to receive jocular, semi- 
serious and half humorous letters from all over 
the country, asking what I had done now to 
create such a furore, and why it was that some- 
one had made an attempt on my life. 

Common courtesy required that I at least 
reply to these letters from my numerous friends 
in various parts of the country. It was no easy 
matter to write so many letters Jalmost every 
day. I nearly went bankrupt buying postage 
stamps, and almost had nervous prostration 
in making and following up the attempt to 
reply to the constant queries. 

This is the article that was sent out and 
appeared in all the papers: (i Dr. J. Connell, the 
well-known scientific optician who has been 
practicing optometry for several years in Val- 
paraiso, Indiana, with offices in the Urbans' 
Building on College Avenue, was the recipient 



148 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

of what seems to be an infernal machine, and 
also had another placed in his bedroom which 
however failed to explode. 

It looks very much like a deliberate attempt 
upon his life although he says he has no enemies 
that he knows of. The police are investigating 
the strange circumstances, and Dr. Connell 
has requested a private detective to look into the 
matter, but so far without the slightest success, 
absolutely no clue being found. 1 ' 

The afternoon of the same day I found the 
gas-pipe in my room the express agent delivered 
a package to me, and upon opening the package, 
and sliding back the lid of the box half a dozen 
blue-tip parlor matches were ignited with a 
crackling sound and a puff of smoke. Thus, 
the second infernal machine had been placed. 

And the joke of it was that I paid the alleged 
expressman half a dollar for delivering the box! 

Warnings from my friends to "be careful and 
take no chances on going out nights" continued 
to pour in at each delivery of mail. I never 
learned for two full years that the joke was 
successfully perpetrated by my two staunch 
friends, Attorney W. Iy. Wright and the student 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 149 

friend, J. M. Shilling, who had apparently been 
concerned for my safety through it all. 

A little while ago, I met an old friend in 
St. Paul, one whom I had gotten to know pretty 
well several years before in Spokane, Wash- 
ington — William D. Jacobs. He had been 
having an attack of acute indigestion for several 
days, business had gone all to the bad, taxes 
were unusually high and income low. To add 
to these vexations he confided to me that he 
was suffering from insomnia and hadn't slept 
a wink for a week. Not in condition or 
position to look upon the rose-tinted, humorous 
side of life, he drew me quickly to one side and 
fixing his eyes upon the leaden Minnesota skies, 
said," Prof. Connell, I want to give you my ideas 
of 

life:' 

Man comes into this world without his 
consent and leaves it against his will. During 
his stay on earth his time is spent in one con- 
tinuous round of contraries and misunder- 
standings. In his infancy he is an angel; in his 
boyhood he is a devil; in his manhood he is 
ever>' thing from a lizard up; in his duties he is 



150 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

a " dam fool" ; if he raises a family he is a chump ; 
if he raises a check he is a thief, and then the 
law raises Cain with him; if he is a poor man, 
he is a poor manager and has no sense; if he is 
rich, he is dishonest, but considered smart; 
if he is in politics, he is a grafter and a crook; 
if he is out of politics, you can't place him, for 
he is "an undesirable citizen"; if he goes to 
church, he is a hypocrite; if he stays away from 
church he is a sinner; if he donates to foreign 
missions, he does it for show; if he doesn't, he 
is stingy and a " tight wad." 

When he first comes into the world every- 
body wants to kiss him! Before he goes out, 
they all want to kick him! If he dies young, 
there was a "great future before him;" if he 
lives to a ripe old age, he is in the way, — only 
''living to save funeral expenses." Life is a 
funny proposition after all! 

And with a courteous good night, Will shook 
hands and entered his hotel, while I, waiting 
up for the midnight train, went on to the depot 
and purchased a ticket for my destination. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



Conclusion. 



After life's fitful fever he sleeps well. 

— Shakespeare. 

And after all our joys, sorrows, perplexities, 
failures and successes, heart-aches, doubts, 
dreams, hopes, joyous times and ill-advised 
fun, frolic and happy days, life at last must 
close and death claim us. And surely 
if we have led an honest, honorable and un- 
selfish life we can remember up to the last 
moment before we pass into the final shadow 
that the things worth while, and worth the 
most at the last, were those genial, jovial, 
happy, humorous times, — the pleasant and 
the funny things that have occurred in life, and 
the hope that they may continue on when this 
world to us shall be no more. Life is so full 
of the stern, severe, relentless, harsh and impla- 
cable, that it seems almost imperatively essen- 
tial that we occasionally relax, forget the hard 



151 



152 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

things in life, cease to sigh for the unattainable 
and to dream of what can never be, and in 
stead, think only of the happy unforgotten 
past and of the fun, humor and good cheer 
it has brought into our lives. 

Although I have not seen him for a number 
of years I will never be able to forget a local 
character who for years lived in the little village 
of Fennville in Allegan County, Michigan — 
one, John McGuire. Johnnie was a typical 
Irishman and had seen service for a number 
of years in the British army. 

He wore medals for participation and con- 
spicuous bravery in the Battles of Alma, Inker- 
man and Sebastapol. He was also an active 
soldier in some of the Indian wars of the United 
States — in the west. 

John was a typical, warm-hearted, impulsive 
Irishman, — bright, genial, good-natured, witty 
with all the Celtic wit; the soul of honor, and 
honest and dependable to the utmost. Every- 
one liked Johnnie and everyone was his friend. 

But he had one fault ! When too strongly 
tempted he would drink and he was a child in 
the hands of ' John Barleycorn." His only 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 153 

safety was in total abstinence, and that meant 
he would not drink if he were where he could 
get nothing to drink. 

John used to trade with me when I was 
running the little grocery store in Fennville. 
Mr. McGuire's wife was sometimes a little harsh 
with him, and there were some unkind people 
who even went so far as to say she was a good 
deal of a shrew, or termagant. 

Physically, Mrs. McGuire had all the best of 
the argument. In a finish contest there would 
not have been the slightest doubt that John's 
better half would have won, hands down. 

One evening Mr. McGuire was in the store 
with Raven and myself and had been drinking 
a little. His wife came after him and imme- 
diately "bawled him out" in this fashion. 
"Here you are, you little Irishman, down here 
drunk and I up on the hill starving to death." 

"And its too bad I'm an Irishman," said 
Johnnie. With two or three more thrusts on 
the part of his better half, Johnnie's fighting 
blood arose, and he continued, "I don't want 
any d — m woman agitatin' me mind tonight." 

What was fast becoming an acute estrange- 



154 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

ment Raven diplomatically prevented by prom- 
ising Mrs. McGuire that he would see that 
Johnnie went home soon and asking her to go 
and not raise his ire any more. 

"I don't want any one agitatin' me mind 
tonight," became thereafter almost a classic 
expression in that little village. 

The Pere Marquette Railway now has a fine 
large modern stone depot at Muskegon, Michigan 
instead of the smaller unpretentious one in 
which I had my offices when my old friend, 
Stillman J. Kidder and I used to work there 
nearly a quarter of a century ago. The baggage 
room is especially fine, and when I was there 
half a dozen years ago was presided over by a 
man who in his younger years must often have 
felt some of the delights of the jovial side of 
life. Even then, at the robust age of thirty, 
he was still able to see the humor in a "good 
thing." This baggage man was a large, strong, 
powerful man weighing close to two-hundred 
pounds, and having much the same kind of 
build and matchless physique as the ex-heavy- 
weight champion pugilist, James J. Corbett. 

Muskegon used to be a pretty tough little 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 155 

town, but long ago and even before this time 
had changed radically from its strenuous days 
and habits and had become a modest, quiet and 
almost an effeminate city. 

In his own hand writing the baggage man at 
Muskegon had printed and hung over his desk 
this placard, "If you want to know whose run- 
ning this joint, just start something." The 
husky ones took him at his word and never 
started anything! The middle-weights got 
their baggage checked in silence and passed on 
into the waiting coach, while the more delicate 
ones of both sexes paused a moment to admire 
the athletic physique of the "baggage smasher" 
before taking the carriage to their hotel. 

And this was the funny part of it. The big 
man was the most genial, jovial, open-hearted, 
harmless and friendly fellow in the world. 
He could not have been dragged into any 
kind of trouble by a yoke of oxen. 

He would have walked from one end of the 
city to the other to do anyone the slightest 
favor. And, so serene, gentle and happy was 
his disposition that while fully competent to 
defend the defenseless, a whole regiment could 



156 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

have stood on his toes without causing him to 
lose temper or say one unkind or unpleasant 
word to those about him. 

He was loved by the traveling public and 
appreciated by the railroad officials, and be- 
cause he knew the man so well and appreciated 
the humor of the joke, the General Passenger 
Agent permitted the notice, "If you want to 
know whose running this joint, just start 
something," to stand. 

When I was night operator on the Pere 
Marquette Railroad in the little village of 
Bangor, Michigan, a good many years ago, two 
students, one Dell Jackson and the other 
Stillman J. Kidder, were learning telegraphy 
of the agent there, Mark Remington. Dell, 
although a young fellow was precocious and 
already a man of the world, knowing 
as much as was good for him and perhaps 
more. Kidder on the other hand was by 
all odds the greenest fellow I ever ran across, 
north, east, south, or west. He had a florid 
complexion and auburn hair, always wore dove- 
colored trousers and a speckled coat, and 
parted his hair on both sides, while winter 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 157 

and summer he wore the unchanging purple 
necktie, probably to match his complexion. 

Kidder was a splendid fellow, too, bright, 
keen and capable, the soul of honor, honesty 
and wit, but his complexion and his looks were 
against him — he looked " green." 

He was smitten by the charms of a very 
pretty little girl who was a chamber maid in the 
hotel where I was stopping, and he confided his 
infatuation to us. Dell and I then took Still- 
man into our "private office", and after spread- 
ing out his hands and placing one hand on 
either knee, Dell gave him this line of talk. 

"Now, Kidder, Mr. Connell and I are both 
older than you and know just exactly what to 
do in a case like this, for each of us has had so 
much experience. Listen to us and follow our 
advice to the letter and you will come out all 
right. Neither of us can introduce you to this 
girl in the regular way because we don't know 
her ourselves, but you do this: — attend Rev. 
Decker's revival services tonight, and after the 
meeting is over contrive to meet this girl just 
outside the door when she is on her way home. 
Approach her modestly, and after raising your 



158 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

hat, introduce yourself by saying, ' My name is 
Kidder and I'm from Breed sville, ■ and then 
ask her if you may walk home with her." He 
followed our instructions to the letter, but she 
turned him down cold, and some very young 
boys who overheard the incident began to chant 
in chorus, "my name is Kidder and I'm from 
Breedsville. " For sometime thereafter they 
followed the poor boy with this chant when- 
ever he appeared. 

Yet I always felt that the only thing that 
was wrong with Kidder then, was his florid 
complexion, purple necktie, and the fact that 
they all knew he was only a boy and didn't 
have any money. The last objection was the 
chief one. Older now he has since made good, 
and with a charming wife and one bright grown- 
up boy has long been living in his own expensive 
house on Jiroch Street, Muskegon, Michigan. 
That is a whole lot better than Dell or I have 
done — certainly much better than the writer 
has done as far at least, as owning a house is 
concerned. 

I called on my old friend some few years 
ago, and was delightfully entertained for sev- 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 159 

eral days by himself and his wife in his beauti- 
ful home. Genial, to his finger tips a busi- 
ness man, he succeeds fully and wonder- 
fully wherever he goes, and so, in the presence 
of his splendid family at his magnificent 
home, I but dimly recollected our kiddish 
moments in the far away days. 

It is not easy for me to forget a character 
I used to know when I was teaching a little 
rural school in Manlius near New Richmond, a 
quarter of a century ago — one I. N. Meeker, 
or as he was commonly called, "Newt." 

Mr. Meeker was at that time a man about 
fifty-five years of age, and lived in a very large, 
rambling, ancient house next door to the little 
country schoolhouse where I taught. His 
brother's wife, theu an old woman nearly seven- 
ty years of age, lived with him and kept 
house for him. Her grandson, Tommy Meeker, 
then a boy twelve years of age who went to my 
school, lived with her and it was there I roomed 
and boarded. 

From the American's standpoint, Mr. 
Meeker had made a failure of life — he "never 



160 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

made any money" and never had any. Bright 
and keen intellectually, widely read and al- 
most profound in legal and social matters 
and in affairs of state, he nevertheless was a 
failure financially, and so — did not "count." 

I follow a precedent in speaking at all of my 
poor old friend, Newt Meeker. Charles Dickens 
did not go into the halls of fame and into the 
mansions of the rich to find his characters, 
but found them in the lanes where the lowly 
were forced to live, and in the haunts of 
squalor, vice and ignorance. And so, my friend 
Newt, bright, honest, honorable and almost 
a sage, was neither respected nor respectable — 
he "had no money." 

I occupied a large room upstairs to reach 
wlrch it was necessary to pass through an un- 
occupied apartment after reaching the head of 
the stairs. 

Mr. Meeker had the most wonderful flow 
of language I ever heard! Each word was 
so tremendous, one following the other with- 
out an instant's break or pause, and all used with 
such correctness, only the uncommon and un- 
usually big words being selected, that the effect 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 161 

was well-nigh startling, not to say appalling! 
He would "let off" a fusilade of epigrams, a 
broadside of these lengthy, uncommon and 
almost unheard of words upon you, without any 
known provocation whatever, and at the most 
unexpected moment, night or day. 

My first introduction to Mr. Meeker's florid 
style of speech was when he came to my door 
to call me to breakfast the first morning I was 
there. Coming into my room and holding the 
door slightly ajar, for about fifteen minutes he 
gave me a talk like the following, — never for 
a single instant hesitating in the choice of words, 
and rolling out unctiously one after another 
the biggest and most tremendous words I had 
ever heard, half of which at least, were I to 
hear them now at forty-two years of age, I 
would not understand. 

"Mr. Connell, I have just this moment 
returned from the sun -kissed fields where 
I have been extracting the foaming lacteal 
fluid from the udder of the docile bovine. 
The sun gilds the hill tops. Arise and hear 
the birds singing their praises to the rising 
'god of day.' Then we will descend at once 



162 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

to the culinary department where Mrs. 
Meeker has already prepared for you a most 
sumptous repast. " And so on, for half an hour 
without a moment's pause, until at last I was 
forced in self-defense to rise, dress and go down 
stairs with him to breakfast. 

And the same thing was repeated each morn- 
ing thereafter, only the theme and wording were 
different, the phraseology each time being if 
possible more extravagant and extraordinary 
than it was the morning before. 

The twelve year old boy, Tommy, was really 
not the most gifted person intellectually in 
the world, but Mr. Meeker seemed to take 
special delight in using the longest words 
possible when speaking to him about the very 
simplest things. 

While no harm was done the boy, the look 
of utter confusion, astonishment and bewil- 
derment on his face was laughable in the 
extreme. 

Readers will recall that in the opening 
chapters of this book I made some jocular 
reference to some of my friends who talk so 
much that they could be heard through the 



OF A GLOBE TROTTER 163 

furnace pipes in the adjoining room. Either 
they have ceased entirely, or I have grown 
accustomed to the talking and do not notice it 
any more, at least, it does not annoy me any 
more. 

Since that chapter was written I have be- 
come quite intimately acquainted with the 
different members of the family, and find them 
the nicest and most delightful people in the 
world. All of which goes to prove that when we 
don't know people we are apt to criticize them, 
and when we do know them and become well- 
acquainted, forthwith they become the best 
people in the world. 

And the same thing is true with nations. 
Nations which actually know each other seldom 
quarrel and when they do quarrel it is well- 
nigh proof that they do not know each other. 

And again, we are at liberty to say of another 
almost anything we want as long as no mal- 
ice is implied and our remarks are intended 
only as a joke. 

Thanking my friends for their courtesy in 
being good enough to read what I have thus 
far written, and kindly taking leave of them 
in the concluding chapter of these Reminiscent 



164 SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES 

Experiences, I can no more fittingly bring this 
little volume to a close than by subjoining the 
following erratic verse which I picked up 
somewhere. 

It is not poetry, although it rhymes. Nei- 
ther is it doggerel, because in it there could be 
quite as much fact as fancy. The name of the 
little rhyme is: 

GO TO FATHER 

"I once asked a maiden to wed. 
In reply to my question she said, 
'Go to Father T Now she knew that 
I knew that her father was dead, 
And she knew that I knew the life 
He had led, and she knew that 
I knew what she meant when she said, 
Go to Father!"' 



FINIS. 



